49 questions, several taken from real university exams. Think it through first, then show the answer: the positions and arguments behind it, each with its passage.
Metaphysics · Aristotle, Plato
Why does Aristotle reject separate Forms?
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›UniversalsAristotleModerate realism
A universal is what is by nature predicated of many, and it is real, but it does not exist separately from the particulars it is predicated of. No universal is a substance; separating universals from particulars, as Plato did, is the error that generates the difficulties of the Forms. Universals exist in things and are grasped by the intellect from them.
Scholarly consensusCategories; De Interpretatione 7; Metaphysics Z.13, Mkatholou, kath' hekaston, ousia, choristonDraft — not yet reviewed
›The Third Man against separate FormsAristotle · argumentSeparate Forms lead to an infinite regress; what is predicated of many is a universal, not a separate substance, so Forms should not be posited apart from things. The premises are a modern reconstruction (Vlastos 1954, naming self-predication and non-identity): Aristotle only names the Third Man in the Metaphysics, and its fullest ancient form is Alexander's report of the lost On Ideas, with a variant in the Sophistical Refutations.
1One over many: wherever many things share one character, Platonists posit one separate Form of that character.
2Self-predication: the Form is itself characterised by what it is the Form of, so the Form of Man, like individual men, is a man.
3Non-identity: the Form is separate from, and not identical with, the things that share in it.
4So the Form of Man together with individual men are a new many sharing one character, which by the first premise requires a further, third Man, and so on without end.
∴Separate Forms lead to an infinite regress; what is predicated of many is a universal, not a separate substance, so Forms should not be posited apart from things. The premises are a modern reconstruction (Vlastos 1954, naming self-predication and non-identity): Aristotle only names the Third Man in the Metaphysics, and its fullest ancient form is Alexander's report of the lost On Ideas, with a variant in the Sophistical Refutations.
Plato objects. Plato raised the regress himself in the Parmenides, yet still held that without Forms there would be nothing for thought to fix on and discourse would be destroyed.
›Forms explain nothingAristotle · argumentSeparate Forms are causally idle: they explain neither the being nor the becoming of sensible things, and an adequate explanation needs moving causes and forms within things.
1Forms are posited as causes of sensible things, of their being, their coming to be and our knowledge of them.
2But Forms contribute nothing to the motion or change of sensibles, and, not being in them, they contribute nothing to their being or to our knowledge of them.
3To call Forms patterns in which other things participate is to use empty words and poetic metaphors.
4A substance cannot exist apart from that of which it is the substance, yet Forms are said to be the substances of things and separate from them.
5Even granting Forms, things do not come to be unless something moves them, and many things, such as houses and rings, come to be though Platonists posit no Forms of them.
∴Separate Forms are causally idle: they explain neither the being nor the becoming of sensible things, and an adequate explanation needs moving causes and forms within things.
Plato objects. The Phaedo already separates two kinds of explanation: the "safe" answer that beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful, and the material conditions without which a cause could not be a cause. Forms are offered as the first kind, not as moving causes, so it is no objection that they move nothing.
›One over manyPlato · argumentFor each plurality called by one name there is one Form, existing by itself, in which the many participate.
1Whenever many things are called by the same name, there is some one character they share (Republic 596a).
2That one character is not identical with any one of the many things, nor with all of them together.
3What the many share must exist in its own right for them to share in it; a craftsman makes beds by looking to the Form of bed, but makes no Form (596b).
4A separate argument, from compresence (Republic 479a–c), adds that each sensible F also appears not-F, so no sensible can be what F itself is.
∴For each plurality called by one name there is one Form, existing by itself, in which the many participate.
Plato objects. The Parmenides turns the argument on itself: if large things share one Form of Largeness, then the Form and the large things, viewed together, share a further Largeness, and so on without end.
Aristotle objects. The one-over-many argument proves at most that there are universals, not separate Forms, and taken strictly it yields the Third Man and Forms of things Platonists deny have Forms.
What is the argument from recollection, and what does it prove?
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›Innate knowledgePlatoInnate knowledge
Learning is recollection. Questioned step by step, an untaught slave recovers geometrical truths from within himself, and we judge sensible equals deficient only because we already know Equality itself. The soul therefore has knowledge that it did not get from perception in this life; experience only prompts it to recover what it has.
Scholarly consensusMeno, Phaedo, Phaedrus (transitional and middle); speaker Socratesanamnesis, psyche, eidosDraft — not yet reviewed
The two main texts differ on how the soul came to have this knowledge. The Meno leaves open whether it was acquired or always possessed and concludes that the truth is always in the soul (85d–86b); the Phaedo says it was acquired before birth and lost at birth (75c–76c). Neither is innateness in the early-modern sense of ideas built into the mind.
›The argument from recollectionPlato · argumentWe acquired knowledge of the Forms before birth and recover it by recollection when perception reminds us; so the soul existed, with intelligence, before it entered the body.
1We know what Equality itself is, since we judge sensible equal things by it.
2Sensible equals, such as equal sticks and stones, always fall short of Equality itself, and we recognise that they do.
3To judge that something falls short of a standard, we must already know the standard.
4We have been perceiving sensible equals since birth, so we cannot have gained knowledge of Equality itself from perception during this life.
∴We acquired knowledge of the Forms before birth and recover it by recollection when perception reminds us; so the soul existed, with intelligence, before it entered the body.
Aristotle objects. It is absurd to suppose we possess the most precise knowledge of first principles without noticing it. We acquire it through perception, memory, experience and induction, and the intellect starts like an unwritten tablet.
Plato objects. Simmias and Cebes, in the dialogue itself, grant that recollection proves pre-existence but not survival after death, which is why further arguments are needed.
How does Aristotle define the soul, and why is he not a materialist?
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›Soul and bodyAristotleHylomorphism
The soul is the form, or first actuality, of a natural body that has life potentially. It is no more sensible to ask whether soul and body are one than to ask this of the wax and its shape. So the soul is not separable from the body, except perhaps for some part that is not the actuality of any bodily organ.
Stated in the textDe Anima II.1–2, III.4psyche, entelecheia, eidos, hyle, soma organikonDraft — not yet reviewed
On the standard reading Aristotle is not a materialist: the soul is form, not fine matter, and intellect is said to be unmixed with the body. Functionalist and materialist readings of De Anima are defended in the literature, and the exception for intellect is where the hylomorphic picture strains.
›The soul is the form of a living bodyAristotle · argumentThe soul is the form of the living body; soul and body are one as the wax and its shape are one, and the soul (or at least most of it) is not separable from the body.
1Substance is said in three ways, as matter, as form, and as the compound of the two.
2A natural body that has life is a substance in the sense of a compound.
3The body is not what is said of a subject but the subject itself, that is, matter.
4So the soul, which makes the body alive, must be substance as form, the first actuality of a natural body that has life potentially.
∴The soul is the form of the living body; soul and body are one as the wax and its shape are one, and the soul (or at least most of it) is not separable from the body.
René Descartes objects. I can clearly and distinctly understand myself as a thinking thing apart from body, and what can be so understood apart can be made to exist apart by God; so the mind is a substance really distinct from the body.
Ibn Sina objects. A person created in mid-air, without sensing any part of their body, would still affirm their own existence; so the self is grasped as something other than the body. Ibn Sina presents this as an alerting (tanbih) toward the soul's being a substance in its own right, not as a demonstration, and its force is debated.
What is the function argument, and what does it conclude about the human good?
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›The highest goodAristotleFlourishing through virtue* (contested reading)
The highest good is eudaimonia, which is complete and self-sufficient. The function argument shows it to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and in the best and most complete virtue, over a complete life. Book X then ranks the contemplative life first and the life of practical virtue second.
Another reading. Intellectualist or dominant-end reading (Kraut 1989): eudaimonia in the strict sense is theoretical contemplation alone, as Nicomachean Ethics X.7–8 says; the life of practical virtue is happy only in a secondary way.
Contested readingNicomachean Ethics I.7 vs X.7–8eudaimonia, ergon, energeia, arete, theoria, teleionDraft — not yet reviewed
The main code follows the inclusive reading (Ackrill 1974), on which eudaimonia comprises all intrinsically worthwhile activities, chief among them virtuous action. The inclusive versus dominant-end dispute is a dispute over exactly these two options.
›The function argumentAristotle · argumentThe human good is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete, over a complete life.
1For anything that has a function, its good lies in performing that function well.
2Human beings have a function, as each bodily organ and each craftsman does.
3The human function is not nutrition or perception, which we share with plants and animals, but an active life of the part of the soul that has reason.
4Performing a function well is performing it in accordance with the relevant virtue.
∴The human good is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete, over a complete life.
Immanuel Kant objects. A contrast rather than a refutation. Kant argues that if nature had meant reason for our happiness it chose badly, since instinct would serve happiness better, so reason's purpose is to produce a will good in itself. His target is happiness as the satisfaction of inclination (Glückseligkeit), not eudaimonia as excellent activity, and his own argument is teleological in form, reasoning from the function of reason as Aristotle does.
David Hume objects. No conclusion about what one ought to do follows from premises about what is the case; a fact about human nature or function cannot by itself establish a good. The Aristotelian reply is that "function" is already an evaluative concept: to know what a knife or a harpist is for is to know what a good one is (MacIntyre 1981).
Is Aristotle's happiness the life of practical virtue or of contemplation?
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›The highest goodAristotleFlourishing through virtue* (contested reading)
The highest good is eudaimonia, which is complete and self-sufficient. The function argument shows it to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and in the best and most complete virtue, over a complete life. Book X then ranks the contemplative life first and the life of practical virtue second.
Another reading. Intellectualist or dominant-end reading (Kraut 1989): eudaimonia in the strict sense is theoretical contemplation alone, as Nicomachean Ethics X.7–8 says; the life of practical virtue is happy only in a secondary way.
Contested readingNicomachean Ethics I.7 vs X.7–8eudaimonia, ergon, energeia, arete, theoria, teleionDraft — not yet reviewed
The main code follows the inclusive reading (Ackrill 1974), on which eudaimonia comprises all intrinsically worthwhile activities, chief among them virtuous action. The inclusive versus dominant-end dispute is a dispute over exactly these two options.
How does Plato distinguish knowledge from opinion in Republic V?
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›Certainty, doubt and the limits of knowledgePlatoYes* (contested reading)
Plato's question is less whether certainty is possible than how knowledge differs from opinion. In Republic V knowledge is an infallible power set over what is, and opinion a fallible power set over what both is and is not; the dialectician who reaches the Good can give an account that survives every refutation. Fallibility belongs to opinion, not to knowledge as such, though the Socrates of the Republic disclaims having that knowledge of the Good himself (506b–e).
Across the works. In the early dialogues Socrates disclaims knowledge of the most important things and the discussions end in aporia (Apology 21b–23b); the confident epistemology of the Republic is a later development.
Another reading. The sceptical Academy, from Arcesilaus to Carneades, read Plato himself as an aporetic inquirer who asserts nothing, pointing to the dialogue form and to the Theaetetus, which ends without a definition of knowledge.
Contested readingRepublic V–VII (middle; speaker Socrates); contrast the early dialogues and the late-middle Theaetetusepisteme, doxa, logos, dialektikeDraft — not yet reviewed
The summary follows the traditional "objects" (two-worlds) reading of Republic V. On the veridical reading (Fine 1978), knowledge and opinion differ in whether their contents are guaranteed true, not in having different objects; the stance is unchanged, but the argument for it is different.
›Knowledge and opinion have different objectsPlato · argumentThe sensible many are objects of opinion; only the Forms, which are always the same, are objects of knowledge. (This is the "objects" or two-worlds reconstruction. On the veridical reading, Fine 1978, "set over what is" means set over what is true: knowledge entails truth and opinion does not, the two may share objects, and the argument does not by itself require Forms.)
1Knowledge is set over what is, ignorance over what is not.
2Knowledge and opinion are different powers, since knowledge is infallible and opinion is not, and different powers are set over different objects.
3So opinion is set over something between what is and what is not.
4The many beautiful things also appear ugly, the many just things unjust, the many doubles halves; each sensible both is and is not what it is called.
∴The sensible many are objects of opinion; only the Forms, which are always the same, are objects of knowledge. (This is the "objects" or two-worlds reconstruction. On the veridical reading, Fine 1978, "set over what is" means set over what is true: knowledge entails truth and opinion does not, the two may share objects, and the argument does not by itself require Forms.)
Aristotle objects. Socrates was right to seek universal definitions but did not separate them; Plato made the Forms separate because he accepted the Heraclitean flux of sensibles. Knowledge is of universals, but universals exist in sensible things, so separation is unnecessary.
Is Plato an idealist? What kind of realism is the theory of Forms?
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›Being and realityPlatoSeparate Forms
What truly is are the Forms: eternal, unchanging, intelligible natures such as the Just itself or the Equal itself, which sensible things participate in and are named after. Sensibles come to be and pass away and are never fully what they are called. Above the Forms stands the Good, the source of their being and intelligibility, which surpasses being in dignity and power.
Another reading. Aristotle reports that Plato made the One and the Great-and-Small (the Indefinite Dyad) the principles of the Forms themselves (Metaphysics A.6, 987b18–988a17). The Tübingen school (Krämer, Gaiser) reconstructs from such reports an unwritten doctrine in which the Good of the Republic is the One, the first principle from which the Forms derive.
Scholarly consensusmiddle dialogues (Phaedo, Republic; speaker Socrates); criticised in the late-middle Parmenides 130a–135c; retained in the late Timaeus (speaker Timaeus)eidos, idea, ousia, methexis, to agathon, epekeina tes ousiasDraft — not yet reviewed
Calling this "idealism" is a modern misnomer: the Forms are mind-independent realities, not ideas in a mind. How far the late dialogues revise the theory after the Parmenides is debated. The option `the-one` is defined in Plotinian terms; the alternative uses it only for a derivation of the Forms from a first principle.
Wherever many things are called by one name there is one Form, which exists by itself, apart from the particulars and from our minds; particulars have their character by participating in it, as beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. The Parmenides presses hard on how participation can work and rejects the suggestion that Forms are thoughts in minds (132b–c), yet concludes that without Forms thought and discourse would be impossible.
Scholarly consensusmiddle dialogues (speaker Socrates); tested in the late-middle Parmenides (Parmenides questioning the young Socrates)eidos, methexis, mimesis, paradeigma, auto kath' hautoDraft — not yet reviewed
Forms are not just universals: they are perfect paradigms that seem to be what they are in the highest degree (the Beautiful is beautiful), which is what invites the Third Man regress.
What role does the Form of the Good play in Plato's account of knowledge and value?
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›TruthPlatoTruth as a feature of being · Correspondence* (contested reading)
Truth belongs first to what fully is: the Form of the Good gives the objects of knowledge their truth and the knower the power to know, and what is more real is more true. Where Plato analyses speech, a true statement says of things that are that they are as they are, and a false one says what is other than what is. The two senses sit side by side; he never unifies them into a single theory.
Another reading. A common analytic reading takes the Republic's "true" and "truly" to mean genuine or real, a sense applied to things, not an account of what makes thoughts true; Plato's only theory of truth is then the correspondence account of the Cratylus and Sophist.
Another reading. Heidegger ("Plato's Doctrine of Truth", 1942) reads the Cave (Republic 514a–517a) as the moment truth shifts from unconcealment to correctness of seeing, so Plato stands at the turn between the two.
Contested readingRepublic VI (middle; speaker Socrates); Cratylus (middle; Socrates) and Sophist (late; the Eleatic Stranger)aletheia, to on, ontos on, idea tou agathou, logos alethesDraft — not yet reviewed
›The basis of moralityPlatoKnowledge of the good · Virtue* (contested reading)
An action is right when it comes from, and preserves, a soul ordered by reason, and that order depends on knowledge of the Good, the greatest study, which makes just things and everything else useful. Plato thus reverses the usual order of explanation: just actions are defined by the condition of soul they produce and preserve, not the just soul by its actions.
Across the works. In the early Protagoras, Socrates argues that knowledge of good and bad is sufficient for right action and that wrongdoing is ignorance, without the Republic's trained character and non-rational parts of the soul.
Another reading. Rightness is grounded in the soul's order rather than in knowledge, since in the Republic most citizens act rightly from trained character and correct belief, not from knowledge of the Good. Sachs (1963) objected that justice so defined need not issue in ordinary just conduct.
Contested readingProtagoras (early) and Republic IV, VI (middle); speaker Socratesidea tou agathou, megiston mathema, dikaiosyne, phronesisDraft — not yet reviewed
The Euthyphro (10a–11b) shows that the pious is not pious because the gods love it, so rightness is not grounded in divine approval; but it is an early, Socratic dialogue. Plato's positive grounding is metaphysical (the Good), which neither option names exactly.
What truly is are the Forms: eternal, unchanging, intelligible natures such as the Just itself or the Equal itself, which sensible things participate in and are named after. Sensibles come to be and pass away and are never fully what they are called. Above the Forms stands the Good, the source of their being and intelligibility, which surpasses being in dignity and power.
Another reading. Aristotle reports that Plato made the One and the Great-and-Small (the Indefinite Dyad) the principles of the Forms themselves (Metaphysics A.6, 987b18–988a17). The Tübingen school (Krämer, Gaiser) reconstructs from such reports an unwritten doctrine in which the Good of the Republic is the One, the first principle from which the Forms derive.
Scholarly consensusmiddle dialogues (Phaedo, Republic; speaker Socrates); criticised in the late-middle Parmenides 130a–135c; retained in the late Timaeus (speaker Timaeus)eidos, idea, ousia, methexis, to agathon, epekeina tes ousiasDraft — not yet reviewed
Calling this "idealism" is a modern misnomer: the Forms are mind-independent realities, not ideas in a mind. How far the late dialogues revise the theory after the Parmenides is debated. The option `the-one` is defined in Plotinian terms; the alternative uses it only for a derivation of the Forms from a first principle.
How does Plato argue that the soul has three parts, and what follows for justice?
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›The highest goodPlatoFlourishing through virtue* (contested reading)
Happiness lies in a just soul, in which reason rules spirit and appetite with their agreement. Virtue is the soul's health and injustice its disease, so the just person is happier than the unjust whatever else befalls him, and justice is good both in itself and for what comes of it.
Another reading. The highest life is contemplative: becoming like god as far as possible (Theaetetus 176a–b), the philosopher's vision of the Good (Republic VII) and the ascent to Beauty itself (Symposium 210a–212a), which practical virtue serves.
Contested readingGorgias (early); Republic II–IV, IX (middle); Theaetetus (late-middle); speaker Socrateseudaimonia, dikaiosyne, arete, harmonia, homoiosis theoiDraft — not yet reviewed
Whether virtue suffices for happiness, as the Gorgias suggests, or is only its dominant constituent is debated for Plato's Socrates (Vlastos 1984); the option does not separate the two.
›The argument for the parts of the soulPlato · argumentThe soul has three distinct parts: reason, spirit and appetite; justice is their right order, with reason ruling.
1The same thing cannot do or undergo opposites in the same respect, in relation to the same thing, at the same time.
2A thirsty person can at the same time desire to drink and refuse to drink.
3The refusal comes from reasoning and the desire from appetite.
4Anger can side with reason against appetite (as when Leontius rages at his own desire to look at corpses) yet differs from reason, since children and animals have it without reason.
∴The soul has three distinct parts: reason, spirit and appetite; justice is their right order, with reason ruling.
Aristotle objects. Dividing the soul into reason, spirit and appetite is arbitrary; by the same logic one could posit indefinitely many parts, and desire would be split across them. The soul's capacities should be distinguished by their functions.
David Hume objects. Reason alone cannot oppose a passion; it only informs desire about means and matters of fact. What looks like reason resisting appetite is a calm passion, mistaken for reason because it produces little felt emotion, prevailing over a violent one.
What is the affinity argument in the Phaedo, and what are its weaknesses?
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›Death and immortalityPlatoThe soul is immortal
The individual soul existed before birth and survives death. The Phaedo argues this from opposites, from recollection, from the soul's affinity with the Forms and from its essential share in life; the Phaedrus argues from the soul's being a self-mover. The myths of judgement assume that the same soul carries its character into its next life.
Consensus attaches to the thesis, not the proofs: whether Plato thought the Phaedo's arguments sound is debated, and Socrates himself asks for their first assumptions to be examined further (107b). Phaedrus 245c psyche pasa can mean "every soul" (Fowler) or "all soul" taken collectively. Whether the whole tripartite soul is immortal or only reason is unclear: Republic 611b–612a hints that the true soul is simpler, and Timaeus 69c–d calls the lower parts mortal.
›The affinity argument for the soul's immortalityPlato · argumentThe soul is most like the divine, deathless and unchanging, and the body like the mortal and dissoluble; so the soul is altogether indissoluble, or nearly so.
1There are two kinds of things, the invisible, uncomposed and unchanging, and the visible, composite and changing.
2Only what is composite is liable to be dispersed and destroyed.
3The soul is invisible and, when it reasons by itself, is drawn to and resembles the unchanging Forms, whereas the body is visible and changing.
4It is natural for the soul to rule and the body to serve, as the divine rules and the mortal serves.
∴The soul is most like the divine, deathless and unchanging, and the body like the mortal and dissoluble; so the soul is altogether indissoluble, or nearly so.
Aristotle objects. The soul is the form of the body, not a separate thing resembling the Forms; like the shape of the wax, it is not separable from the body, except perhaps for intellect.
Epicurus objects. The soul is a body of fine atoms spread through the whole frame; when the containing body is destroyed its atoms disperse, so the soul has no perception after death.
Plato objects. Simmias, in the dialogue itself: the soul may be an attunement of the body's elements, like the attunement of a lyre, which is invisible and divine-seeming yet perishes before the wood and strings; affinity with the invisible does not show that the soul outlasts the body.
Plato objects. Cebes, in the dialogue itself: grant that the soul is stronger and longer-lasting than the body, as a weaver outlasts many cloaks; it may still wear out over many bodies and perish in the end, so durability is not immortality.
Immanuel Kant objects. Aimed at Mendelssohn's proof from the soul's simplicity (Phädon, 1767), and so only indirectly at the Phaedo: even a simple soul could cease to exist by a gradual loss of intensity rather than by being split into parts, so simplicity does not prove permanence.
Why does Aristotle think there must be an unmoved mover, and what is it like?
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›God and the fundamentalAristotleDemonstrable by reason
Motion and time are eternal, so there must be an eternal, unmoved first mover. It must be pure actuality with no potentiality and no matter, otherwise motion could fail. It moves the heavens as an object of love and thought moves, and its life is thought thinking itself.
Stated in the textPhysics VIII; Metaphysics Λ.6–9proton kinoun akineton, energeia, nous, noesis noeseos, theosDraft — not yet reviewed
Aristotle's god is not a creator; it is a final cause of cosmic motion, not the God of the later monotheisms. On the usual reading of Λ.9 it thinks only itself and so does not know individuals, but that reading is contested. Λ.8 also posits 47 or 55 unmoved movers of the celestial spheres (1074a11–14), which complicates talk of a single first principle.
›The argument for an unmoved moverAristotle · argumentThere is an eternal, unmoved, immaterial first mover, pure actuality, whose life is thought thinking itself; on it the heavens and nature depend.
1Motion and time are eternal.
2Eternal motion requires an eternal substance that causes it.
3A cause that had any potentiality might fail to act, so the cause of eternal motion must be pure actuality, without matter.
4What is pure actuality cannot itself be moved; it moves other things as an object of desire and thought moves, without being moved.
∴There is an eternal, unmoved, immaterial first mover, pure actuality, whose life is thought thinking itself; on it the heavens and nature depend.
Immanuel Kant objects. Kant's critique of the cosmological proof is aimed at the later argument from contingency and its tacit reliance on the ontological argument, which Aristotle's argument from motion does not make. What carries over is the first charge: the principle that everything moved has a cause has meaning only within possible experience, so it cannot take us to a first cause outside the series of appearances.
David Hume objects. When we infer a cause from its effects we may ascribe to it only what is needed to produce those effects; nothing licenses inferring a perfect, single, purely actual being.
Did the world have a beginning according to Plato and to Aristotle?
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›The cosmosAristotleEternal and unproduced
The world had no beginning and will have no end. Any first change would need a prior change to bring it about, and time cannot have a first instant, since every now is the end of a past and the start of a future. The heavens are ungenerated and indestructible, and Aristotle explicitly criticises those who say the world was generated but will last forever.
Stated in the textPhysics VIII.1; De Caelo I.10–12aidios, kinesis, chronos, nyn, ouranos, agenetosDraft — not yet reviewed
›The cosmosPlatoOrdered by a craftsman* (contested reading)
The cosmos is visible and bodily, so it has come into existence, and whatever comes into existence has a cause: a good craftsman brought a disorderly motion into order after the pattern of the eternal Forms, making time, a moving image of eternity, together with the heavens. Read at its word, the account gives the ordered world a beginning from pre-existing disorder, with no creation from nothing. Whether it is meant literally is the central dispute, and Timaeus himself calls it only a likely account (29c–d).
Another reading. Didactic reading: the account is a teaching device, like a geometer's construction; the world is everlasting and "generated" only in being caused and dependent. This was the view of the early Academy (Speusippus and Xenocrates, according to the ancient commentators), of most later Platonists including Plotinus and Proclus, and of Cornford (1937).
The main code follows the literal reading of Aristotle (De Caelo I.10, 279b32–280a11, rejecting the didactic defence), of the Middle Platonists Plutarch and Atticus, and of Vlastos (1939) among modern scholars.
›The argument that motion has no beginningAristotle · argumentThere was no first change; motion, time and the cosmos are eternal.
1Suppose there was a first change.
2Every change requires things capable of changing and of causing change, which must already exist.
3Either those things came to be, which is itself a change before the first change, or they existed at rest, and their passing from rest to change is again a prior change.
4Time cannot have a first instant, since every now is the end of a past as well as the start of a future, and there is no time without change.
∴There was no first change; motion, time and the cosmos are eternal.
Thomas Aquinas objects. Neither the world's eternity nor its beginning can be demonstrated; Aristotle's arguments assume that things come to be only by natural change, which does not apply to creation from nothing. That the world began is held by faith.
Augustine of Hippo objects. The world was made with time, not in time, so there was no before in which a prior change could occur, and the question of what preceded creation has no sense.
Immanuel Kant objects. Reason can prove both that the world had a beginning and that it did not; the conflict shows the question exceeds possible experience.
John Philoponus objects. Aristotle's own principles refute him: an actual infinite cannot exist or be traversed, yet an eternal past means that infinitely many days and revolutions have already elapsed, and each new one adds to an infinite, with Saturn's revolutions a fraction of the sun's. So the world must have had a beginning.
al-Ghazali objects. The philosophers cannot show that an eternal will could not decide from eternity that the world begin at a definite time, and an eternal past yields infinitely many celestial revolutions that would have to be both odd and even, or one infinite a fraction of another.
Is the creation story of the Timaeus meant literally?
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›The cosmosPlatoOrdered by a craftsman* (contested reading)
The cosmos is visible and bodily, so it has come into existence, and whatever comes into existence has a cause: a good craftsman brought a disorderly motion into order after the pattern of the eternal Forms, making time, a moving image of eternity, together with the heavens. Read at its word, the account gives the ordered world a beginning from pre-existing disorder, with no creation from nothing. Whether it is meant literally is the central dispute, and Timaeus himself calls it only a likely account (29c–d).
Another reading. Didactic reading: the account is a teaching device, like a geometer's construction; the world is everlasting and "generated" only in being caused and dependent. This was the view of the early Academy (Speusippus and Xenocrates, according to the ancient commentators), of most later Platonists including Plotinus and Proclus, and of Cornford (1937).
The main code follows the literal reading of Aristotle (De Caelo I.10, 279b32–280a11, rejecting the didactic defence), of the Middle Platonists Plutarch and Atticus, and of Vlastos (1939) among modern scholars.
How do Socrates, Plato and Aristotle differ on whether one can know the good and fail to do it?
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›Virtue and knowledgePlatoKnowledge plus habituation* (contested reading)
In the Republic the soul has parts that can conflict, so knowing what is best does not by itself ensure acting on it: appetite can drag a person against his reasoning, and spirit and appetite must be trained by music, gymnastics and habit to follow reason. Virtue is reason's wisdom together with the agreement of the trained lower parts.
Across the works. In the early Protagoras Socrates argues that knowledge rules whoever has it and that acting against one's knowledge of the best is impossible (352b–358d).
Contested readingRepublic IV (middle; speaker Socrates); contrast Protagoras (early)arete, episteme, logistikon, thumoeides, paideia, akrasiaDraft — not yet reviewed
The trap here is attributing the Socratic thesis to Plato wholesale. Even in the Republic it is unclear whether someone with full knowledge, not mere belief, could act against it.
›Virtue and knowledgeAristotleKnowledge plus habituation
Character virtue is not knowledge: it comes from habituation, as we become just by doing just acts. Practical wisdom is needed to complete it, but knowing the good does not guarantee acting on it. Against Socrates, weakness of will (akrasia) is real; yet Aristotle's analysis concedes that it is not knowledge in the full sense that passion overcomes.
Stated in the textNicomachean Ethics II.1; VII.1–3ethos, ethike arete, phronesis, akrasia, enkrateiaDraft — not yet reviewed
Does anything of the person survive death on Aristotle's view? What is disputed about De Anima III.5?
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›Death and immortalityAristotleOnly intellect, impersonally* (contested reading)
Since the soul is the form of the body, it perishes with the body, with the possible exception of intellect. De Anima III.5 says that the intellect which makes all things is separable, unaffected and unmixed, and that this alone is immortal and eternal; it adds that we do not remember, since the intellect that is affected perishes. On the reading coded here something intellectual survives without memory or character, but whose intellect it is, and what we fail to remember, are the most disputed questions in the treatise.
Another reading. Alexander of Aphrodisias, and among modern scholars Caston (1999), identify the productive intellect with God, not a part of the human soul; on this reading the human soul is wholly mortal and nothing of the individual survives.
Another reading. Aquinas read the productive intellect as a power of each individual soul, so each human intellect, and the soul whose form it is, survives death.
Contested readingDe Anima I.4, II.2, III.5nous poietikos, nous pathetikos, choristos, athanatos, aidiosDraft — not yet reviewed
Why does Plato distrust poetry, and how does Aristotle answer him?
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›Beauty and artPlatoSuspect imitation · Beauty as ascent
Imitative poetry and painting copy sensible things, which are themselves copies of Forms, so they stand at a third remove from the truth, and poetry feeds the passions it should help to dry up; the ideal city admits only hymns to the gods and praises of good men. Beauty is another matter: love of beautiful bodies, rightly led, rises step by step to the Beautiful itself, the highest object of contemplation.
Scholarly consensusRepublic II–III, X (middle; speaker Socrates); Symposium (middle; Diotima, reported by Socrates); Phaedrus (middle; Socrates)mimesis, mimetes, eidolon, phantasma, mania, to kalonDraft — not yet reviewed
"Art" here is imitative poetry and painting, not the modern fine arts; techne covers any craft. The Phaedrus praises inspired poetic madness (245a) even as the Republic banishes imitative poetry.
Imitation is natural to humans and a source of learning and pleasure. Tragedy, through pity and fear, brings about the catharsis of such emotions. Poetry is more philosophical than history, because it speaks of universals, of the kind of thing a certain kind of person would say or do.
Stated in the textPoetics 4, 6, 9mimesis, katharsis, eleos, phobos, mythos, katholouDraft — not yet reviewed
What catharsis means (purgation, purification or clarification) is disputed. The Poetics treats poetry as a techne of imitation, not as one of the modern fine arts.
Compare Plato's rule of philosophers with Aristotle's best constitution and his polity.
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›The state and legitimacyPlatoRule by the wise
Cities will have no rest from evils until philosophers rule or rulers become philosophers, because only those who know the Good can order the city for the good of all. Justice in the city, as in the soul, is each class doing its own work: rulers ruling, auxiliaries guarding, producers producing.
Across the works. The late Laws designs a second-best city ruled by law rather than by philosophers, whose constitution must mix monarchy and democracy (693d–e, 739a–e).
Scholarly consensusRepublic (middle; speaker Socrates); Laws III–V (late; the Athenian Stranger)philosophos basileus, dikaiosyne, kallipolis, ta hautou pratteinDraft — not yet reviewed
›The state and legitimacyAristotleAristocracy of virtue* (contested reading)
The city exists for the sake of living well, and constitutions are correct when rulers aim at the common good. The best constitution simply (Politics VII–VIII) is an aristocracy of virtue: only those with the leisure and education for virtue are citizens, and they serve as soldiers when young and deliberate and judge when older, since practical wisdom comes with age. For most actual cities the best practicable order is a polity, a mixture of oligarchy and democracy resting on a large middle class and the rule of law.
Another reading. The polity of Politics IV, which mixes oligarchy and democracy on a strong middle class, is Aristotle's considered answer, since the best constitution of VII–VIII depends on conditions one can only pray for.
Contested readingPolitics I, III, IV (best practicable); VII–VIII (best simply)polis, politeia, aristokratia, zoon politikon, to koinon sympheron, mesoi, kat' euchenDraft — not yet reviewed
Coded for the best simply, as the codebook asks, and only the first clause of "rule by the wise" fits: the rulers are the practically wise (phronimoi), not philosophers; citizens rule in turn by age rather than as a fixed class; and justice is proportional equality, not each part doing its own work. The mixed polity is the best practicable constitution.
What is the difference between the Socratic elenchus and Platonic dialectic?
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How Plato philosophisesmethod
Plato thinks in dialogue: his Socrates examines what others claim to know, and later speakers test hypotheses, divide kinds and tell myths, while Plato himself never speaks. The method is shown in the conversations more than stated, and it changes from the early dialogues to the late ones.
Socrates, as Plato's early dialogues present him, examines people who claim to know by question and answer (the elenchus), while disavowing any wisdom of his own beyond knowing that he does not know. Since he wrote nothing, his method is known only through Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle, who do not describe it in the same way.
How does Aristotle proceed in inquiry, and how does it relate to demonstration?
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How Aristotle philosophisesmethod
Aristotle starts from what is better known to us, the phenomena and the reputable opinions (endoxa), works through the puzzles (aporiai) they raise, and aims at a science set out as demonstration from first principles. He adjusts the method and its exactness to each subject, so that his logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics and ethics do not proceed in quite the same way.
›Certainty, doubt and the limits of knowledgeAristotleYes
Scientific knowledge (episteme) is of what cannot be otherwise, reached by demonstration from first principles that are true, primary and immediate; those principles are grasped by nous and are not themselves demonstrated. The principle of non-contradiction is the firmest of all and cannot be doubted coherently. But each subject admits only its own degree of precision: ethics and politics hold only for the most part.
How, according to Aristotle, do we come to know first principles?
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›Sources of knowledgeAristotleExperience, completed by intellect
All knowledge starts from perception. Repeated perceptions leave memories, many memories of the same thing make up experience, and from experience the universal comes to rest in the soul as the starting point of art and science. Intellect (nous) then grasps the first principles that induction has made familiar, so the stability of knowledge comes from universals that are present in particulars and are drawn out of them.
Stated in the textPosterior Analytics II.19; Metaphysics A.1; De Anima III.8aisthesis, mneme, empeiria, epagoge, nous, techne, epistemeDraft — not yet reviewed
We are not born with knowledge of first principles: it would be absurd to possess the most precise knowledge without noticing it. We are born only with a capacity to acquire it, through perception and induction. Before it thinks, the intellect is nothing actual, like a writing tablet on which nothing is yet written.
Stated in the textPosterior Analytics II.19; De Anima III.4dynamis, nous pathetikos, grammateion, hexisDraft — not yet reviewed
To say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true. Truth and falsity belong to thought and statement, which combine or divide as things are combined or divided. Things are not pale because we truly think them so; our thought is true because they are.
Stated in the textMetaphysics Γ.7, E.4, Θ.10; De Interpretationealethes, pseudos, synthesis, diairesis, logos apophantikosDraft — not yet reviewed
Metaphysics Θ.10 also allows a non-propositional truth for simple, incomposite things, grasped by a kind of contact (thigein) rather than asserted, and α.1 (993b23–31) says that each thing stands to truth as it stands to being, a line later read as truth in things (Aquinas). Heidegger built on Θ.10.
When is an action voluntary for Aristotle, and how does this differ from Plato's claim that no one does wrong willingly?
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›Freedom and determinismAristotleVoluntary action (determinism not posed)
An action is voluntary when its origin lies in the agent and the agent knows the particular circumstances; force and ignorance make it involuntary. Virtue and vice are therefore up to us, and we are responsible even for our characters, since we formed them by our earlier acts. He does not ask whether the agent's choices are themselves causally determined.
De Interpretatione 9 (the sea battle) denies that future contingents are already true, which some read as an indeterminist commitment; the ethics itself stays with voluntariness.
›Freedom and determinismPlatoVoluntary action (determinism not posed)* (contested reading)
Plato does not set freedom against causal determinism. He holds people responsible for the lives they choose, placing the blame on the chooser and not on god, while also holding the Socratic thesis that no one does wrong willingly, since everyone wants what is truly good and errs only from ignorance. The Laws reconciles the two by treating injustice as an involuntary disease of the soul, which the law nonetheless punishes and tries to cure.
Another reading. Freedom in Plato is the condition of a soul ruled by reason, which does what it really wants, namely the good; the tyrant and the tyrannical soul do what seems best to them but not what they wish, and are enslaved (Gorgias 466d–468e; Republic 577d–e). Plotinus' account of freedom (Enneads VI.8) develops this line.
Contested readingProtagoras and Gorgias (early; Socrates); Republic X, the myth of Er (middle; Socrates); Laws IX (late; the Athenian Stranger)hekon, akon, aitia helomenou, hairesis, boulesisDraft — not yet reviewed
The Socratic paradox makes wrongdoing in a sense involuntary, so "voluntary action" here does not mean what it means for Aristotle: Plato grounds responsibility in choice, not in knowing what one does.
›God and the fundamentalPlatoDemonstrable by reason
Reason can show that gods exist. Every motion traces back to a self-moving source, which is soul, so soul is prior to body, and the ordered motions of the heavens must be caused by a good soul or souls, which are gods. The Timaeus adds a good craftsman who ordered the cosmos after an eternal model, and the Laws treats disbelief as an intellectual error to be refuted, not merely an impiety.
Plato's divine is plural (gods, world-soul, craftsman), and how the craftsman relates to the Form of the Good is unresolved in the texts. "Demonstrable" also groups this proof from the priority of soul as self-mover with Aristotle's argument from eternal motion and Ibn Sina's from contingency, which work very differently.
Is there a contradiction between Socrates' stance on obeying the city in the Apology and in the Crito? Can the two be reconciled?
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›The state and legitimacySocratesRule by the wise* (contested reading)
Socrates holds that in matters of right and wrong one should follow the one who knows, not the many, and Xenophon reports that he called rulers only those who know how to rule. He claims to practise the true political art by aiming at what is best, not what pleases. Yet he kept out of public life, served when his turn came, and refused to break the laws to save himself.
Another reading. The Apology stresses withdrawal: his divine sign kept him out of politics, and a just man who wants to survive must live as a private citizen (31c–32a).
Another reading. Kraut (1984, Socrates and the State) reads the expertise principle as a criticism of democratic practice that stops short of any constitutional proposal, and the Crito as leaving room for justified disobedience.
Contested readingPlato, early dialogues (Crito, Gorgias, Apology); Xenophon, Memorabilia I.2 and III.9politike techne, ho epistamenos, idioteueinDraft — not yet reviewed
Socrates never describes a best constitution; the code records the principle that those who know should rule. `withdrawal` is defined in Epicurean terms that do not fit his respect for the laws (Crito 50a–54d).
›Why Socrates must not escape (Crito)Socrates · argumentTo escape would be to do wrong and to break a just agreement, so Socrates must stay and accept the sentence. The last three premises are spoken by the personified Laws; whether Socrates endorses all of them is debated (Weiss 1998, Socrates Dissatisfied).
1One must never do wrong, not even in return for wrong suffered.
2One must do what one has agreed to do, provided it is just.
3Escaping against the city's decision would, as far as one man can, destroy the laws, since a city cannot stand if private persons annul the verdicts of its courts.
4The laws stand to the citizen as parent and nurturer, so the citizen must either persuade the city that it is wrong or do what it commands.
5By staying in Athens for seventy years when he was free to leave, Socrates agreed by his acts to live by its laws.
∴To escape would be to do wrong and to break a just agreement, so Socrates must stay and accept the sentence. The last three premises are spoken by the personified Laws; whether Socrates endorses all of them is debated (Weiss 1998, Socrates Dissatisfied).
David Hume objects. In "Of the Original Contract" (1748) Hume cites the Crito as the only ancient passage that grounds obedience in a promise, and says Socrates builds a Tory conclusion of passive obedience on a Whig foundation of contract. Tacit consent by residence is no real consent for those who cannot afford to leave; the duty of allegiance rests on its usefulness, not on a promise.
Plato objects. In Plato's own Apology Socrates tells the jury that if they released him on condition that he stop philosophising he would obey the god rather than them, which seems to conflict with the Crito's rule to persuade or obey.
Why does Socrates claim that a good person cannot be harmed? Do you agree?
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›The highest goodSocratesFlourishing through virtue
What matters is not living but living well, and living well is the same as living justly. The good person is happy and the unjust person wretched, so doing wrong is worse than suffering it. Care for the soul's excellence comes before care for body, wealth or reputation.
Another reading. In the Protagoras (351b–358d) Socrates argues from the premise that pleasure is the good. Irwin (1977, Plato's Moral Theory) takes this as Socrates' own view; most readers take it as an assumption granted for the sake of argument against the many.
Scholarly consensusPlato, early dialogues (Apology, Crito, Gorgias)eudaimonia, arete, eu zen, dikaiosyneDraft — not yet reviewed
Whether virtue is sufficient for happiness, identical with it, or only its dominant part is disputed: Vlastos (1991) holds virtue sufficient but allows minor non-moral goods; Brickhouse and Smith (1994, Plato's Socrates) deny sufficiency. All three readings fall within this option.
›The basis of moralitySocratesKnowledge of the good
Right action follows from knowing what is good and bad: everyone pursues what they think good, and wrongdoing comes from false belief, not from being overcome. Doing wrong harms the soul of the wrongdoer, so one must never do wrong, not even in return. Rightness is not made by the gods' approval: the gods love the holy because it is holy.
Another reading. Xenophon's Socrates identifies the just with the lawful in conversation with Hippias (Memorabilia IV.4.12–13); no option names this.
Scholarly consensusPlato, early dialogues (Protagoras, Crito, Euthyphro); contrast Xenophon, Memorabilia IV.4episteme, sophia, to agathon, adikein, to hosionDraft — not yet reviewed
›Death is no evil (Apology)Socrates · argumentDeath is not an evil, and those who fear it as the greatest evil think they know what they do not; which lot is better, death or life, is known only to the god.
1Death is one of two things, either a state of nothingness with no perception, or a change and migration of the soul to another place.
2If it is nothingness, it is like a dreamless sleep, and few days and nights of anyone's life are better than such a night, so death would be a gain.
3If it is migration, one will meet the true judges and the famous dead and spend one's time examining them, which would be the greatest good.
4No evil can come to a good man either in life or after death.
∴Death is not an evil, and those who fear it as the greatest evil think they know what they do not; which lot is better, death or life, is known only to the god.
Epicurus objects. Good and evil require sensation, and death is the end of sensation; so an unconscious state can be neither a loss nor a gain. Death is not a blessing like dreamless sleep but simply nothing to us.
Plato objects. The disjunction leaves out a migration to a bad lot. In the Gorgias Socrates' own myth sends the unjust to punishment after death and the incurable to suffer for ever, so death is a gain only for the good, as the Apology's final premise concedes.
Socrates seeks the one character by which all pious acts are pious and uses it as a standard for judging cases. Aristotle reports that he sought universal definitions but did not make universals separate; separation was the step his successors took.
Another reading. R. E. Allen (1970) reads the Euthyphro's form as an early version of the theory of Forms, existing independently of its instances.
Contested readingAristotle's testimony (Metaphysics M.4, M.9); Plato, early dialogues (Euthyphro)eidos, idea, ti esti, ousia, pathosDraft — not yet reviewed
The Euthyphro alone leaves open where the form exists; this coding rests on Aristotle's testimony, which developmentalists accept and agnostics about the historical Socrates do not.
›The basis of moralitySocratesKnowledge of the good
Right action follows from knowing what is good and bad: everyone pursues what they think good, and wrongdoing comes from false belief, not from being overcome. Doing wrong harms the soul of the wrongdoer, so one must never do wrong, not even in return. Rightness is not made by the gods' approval: the gods love the holy because it is holy.
Another reading. Xenophon's Socrates identifies the just with the lawful in conversation with Hippias (Memorabilia IV.4.12–13); no option names this.
Scholarly consensusPlato, early dialogues (Protagoras, Crito, Euthyphro); contrast Xenophon, Memorabilia IV.4episteme, sophia, to agathon, adikein, to hosionDraft — not yet reviewed
›The holy and the god-loved (Euthyphro)Socrates · argumentThe holy is not the same as what the gods love. Being loved by the gods is something that happens to the holy, not what the holy is; the definition gives an affection (pathos), not the essence (ousia), and the inquiry must begin again.
1Euthyphro proposes that the holy is what all the gods love.
2Euthyphro agrees that the gods love the holy because it is holy, and that it is not holy because they love it.
3What is god-loved is god-loved because the gods love it, as anything carried is carried because someone carries it.
4If the holy and the god-loved were the same, then either the holy would be holy because it is loved, or the god-loved would be loved because it is god-loved; both contradict what was agreed.
∴The holy is not the same as what the gods love. Being loved by the gods is something that happens to the holy, not what the holy is; the definition gives an affection (pathos), not the essence (ousia), and the inquiry must begin again.
Does Socrates have wisdom or not? What is the nature of his wisdom? Does he believe he has wisdom?
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How Socrates philosophisesmethod
Socrates, as Plato's early dialogues present him, examines people who claim to know by question and answer (the elenchus), while disavowing any wisdom of his own beyond knowing that he does not know. Since he wrote nothing, his method is known only through Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle, who do not describe it in the same way.
›Certainty, doubt and the limits of knowledgeSocratesProfessed ignorance
Socrates says that he knows nothing fine and good, and that his only advantage is not thinking he knows what he does not. He reads the oracle as saying that human wisdom is worth little. Yet he also claims a few moral certainties, such as that doing wrong is evil and shameful, and holds that examining oneself and others is the best thing a human being can do.
Another reading. The sceptical Academy read the disavowal as full suspension of judgment: Arcesilaus is said to have denied that anything can be known, not even what Socrates had left himself (Cicero, Academica I.44–45).
Scholarly consensusPlato, early dialogues (Apology, Meno 71a–b); Xenophon's Socrates disclaims knowledge far less and instructs his companions directlyeironeia, aporia, anthropine sophia, elenchosDraft — not yet reviewed
How the disavowal fits with the moral claims he does make is the central dispute. Vlastos (1985, "Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge") distinguishes certain knowledge, which he disclaims, from fallible "elenctic" knowledge, which he allows; the option's "narrow practical certainties" covers this only roughly.
Why does Socrates think that doing harm is never right, even in return for harm?
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›The basis of moralitySocratesKnowledge of the good
Right action follows from knowing what is good and bad: everyone pursues what they think good, and wrongdoing comes from false belief, not from being overcome. Doing wrong harms the soul of the wrongdoer, so one must never do wrong, not even in return. Rightness is not made by the gods' approval: the gods love the holy because it is holy.
Another reading. Xenophon's Socrates identifies the just with the lawful in conversation with Hippias (Memorabilia IV.4.12–13); no option names this.
Scholarly consensusPlato, early dialogues (Protagoras, Crito, Euthyphro); contrast Xenophon, Memorabilia IV.4episteme, sophia, to agathon, adikein, to hosionDraft — not yet reviewed
›The highest goodSocratesFlourishing through virtue
What matters is not living but living well, and living well is the same as living justly. The good person is happy and the unjust person wretched, so doing wrong is worse than suffering it. Care for the soul's excellence comes before care for body, wealth or reputation.
Another reading. In the Protagoras (351b–358d) Socrates argues from the premise that pleasure is the good. Irwin (1977, Plato's Moral Theory) takes this as Socrates' own view; most readers take it as an assumption granted for the sake of argument against the many.
Scholarly consensusPlato, early dialogues (Apology, Crito, Gorgias)eudaimonia, arete, eu zen, dikaiosyneDraft — not yet reviewed
Whether virtue is sufficient for happiness, identical with it, or only its dominant part is disputed: Vlastos (1991) holds virtue sufficient but allows minor non-moral goods; Brickhouse and Smith (1994, Plato's Socrates) deny sufficiency. All three readings fall within this option.
›Why Socrates must not escape (Crito)Socrates · argumentTo escape would be to do wrong and to break a just agreement, so Socrates must stay and accept the sentence. The last three premises are spoken by the personified Laws; whether Socrates endorses all of them is debated (Weiss 1998, Socrates Dissatisfied).
1One must never do wrong, not even in return for wrong suffered.
2One must do what one has agreed to do, provided it is just.
3Escaping against the city's decision would, as far as one man can, destroy the laws, since a city cannot stand if private persons annul the verdicts of its courts.
4The laws stand to the citizen as parent and nurturer, so the citizen must either persuade the city that it is wrong or do what it commands.
5By staying in Athens for seventy years when he was free to leave, Socrates agreed by his acts to live by its laws.
∴To escape would be to do wrong and to break a just agreement, so Socrates must stay and accept the sentence. The last three premises are spoken by the personified Laws; whether Socrates endorses all of them is debated (Weiss 1998, Socrates Dissatisfied).
David Hume objects. In "Of the Original Contract" (1748) Hume cites the Crito as the only ancient passage that grounds obedience in a promise, and says Socrates builds a Tory conclusion of passive obedience on a Whig foundation of contract. Tacit consent by residence is no real consent for those who cannot afford to leave; the duty of allegiance rests on its usefulness, not on a promise.
Plato objects. In Plato's own Apology Socrates tells the jury that if they released him on condition that he stop philosophising he would obey the god rather than them, which seems to conflict with the Crito's rule to persuade or obey.
By what steps does Socrates persuade Meno that no one wants what is bad (Meno 77c–78b)? Do you agree with the conclusion?
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›Virtue and knowledgeSocratesYes
Virtue is a kind of knowledge or wisdom, and no one who knows what is best will act otherwise. What the many call being overcome by pleasure is really ignorance about the relative size of goods and evils. Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle agree in attributing this intellectualism to Socrates, which makes it the best-attested of his doctrines.
Scholarly consensusPlato, early dialogues (Protagoras, Meno 87b–89a); Xenophon, Memorabilia III.9; Aristotle's testimony (Nicomachean Ethics VI.13, VII.2)arete, episteme, sophia, akrasia, metretike techneDraft — not yet reviewed
Whether Socrates allows non-rational desires any motivating force is disputed (Penner's strict intellectualism against Brickhouse and Smith, Socratic Moral Psychology, 2010); both sides keep the thesis that virtue is knowledge. The Meno itself ends by suggesting that virtue comes by divine dispensation as true opinion (99e–100b).
›No one does wrong willinglySocrates · argumentWrongdoing comes from ignorance, not from knowing the better and choosing the worse; no one does wrong willingly, and one who knows the good will do it.
1Everyone wants good things, and does whatever they do for the sake of what they take to be good.
2Whoever gets bad things is harmed by them, and those who are harmed are miserable.
3No one wants to be miserable.
4So no one who knows that something is bad for him pursues it; whoever pursues what is bad does so believing it good.
5What the many call being overcome by pleasure is choosing the lesser good over the greater, which is an error of measurement and so a lack of knowledge.
∴Wrongdoing comes from ignorance, not from knowing the better and choosing the worse; no one does wrong willingly, and one who knows the good will do it.
Aristotle objects. The thesis plainly conflicts with what we observe: people act against what they believe best. Aristotle allows that the akratic's knowledge is in a sense not active at the moment of acting, but holds that weakness of will is real and not mere ignorance.
Plato objects. The Republic's Socrates argues that the same person can at once desire to drink and refuse to, and that anger can fight against appetite, as when Leontius looks at the corpses against his own judgment; the soul has parts that can oppose reason, so knowing the best is not enough.
Evaluate one or more of the Phaedo's arguments for the soul's immortality. Where do they fail, or how can they be defended?
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›Death and immortalityPlatoThe soul is immortal
The individual soul existed before birth and survives death. The Phaedo argues this from opposites, from recollection, from the soul's affinity with the Forms and from its essential share in life; the Phaedrus argues from the soul's being a self-mover. The myths of judgement assume that the same soul carries its character into its next life.
Consensus attaches to the thesis, not the proofs: whether Plato thought the Phaedo's arguments sound is debated, and Socrates himself asks for their first assumptions to be examined further (107b). Phaedrus 245c psyche pasa can mean "every soul" (Fowler) or "all soul" taken collectively. Whether the whole tripartite soul is immortal or only reason is unclear: Republic 611b–612a hints that the true soul is simpler, and Timaeus 69c–d calls the lower parts mortal.
›The affinity argument for the soul's immortalityPlato · argumentThe soul is most like the divine, deathless and unchanging, and the body like the mortal and dissoluble; so the soul is altogether indissoluble, or nearly so.
1There are two kinds of things, the invisible, uncomposed and unchanging, and the visible, composite and changing.
2Only what is composite is liable to be dispersed and destroyed.
3The soul is invisible and, when it reasons by itself, is drawn to and resembles the unchanging Forms, whereas the body is visible and changing.
4It is natural for the soul to rule and the body to serve, as the divine rules and the mortal serves.
∴The soul is most like the divine, deathless and unchanging, and the body like the mortal and dissoluble; so the soul is altogether indissoluble, or nearly so.
Aristotle objects. The soul is the form of the body, not a separate thing resembling the Forms; like the shape of the wax, it is not separable from the body, except perhaps for intellect.
Epicurus objects. The soul is a body of fine atoms spread through the whole frame; when the containing body is destroyed its atoms disperse, so the soul has no perception after death.
Plato objects. Simmias, in the dialogue itself: the soul may be an attunement of the body's elements, like the attunement of a lyre, which is invisible and divine-seeming yet perishes before the wood and strings; affinity with the invisible does not show that the soul outlasts the body.
Plato objects. Cebes, in the dialogue itself: grant that the soul is stronger and longer-lasting than the body, as a weaver outlasts many cloaks; it may still wear out over many bodies and perish in the end, so durability is not immortality.
Immanuel Kant objects. Aimed at Mendelssohn's proof from the soul's simplicity (Phädon, 1767), and so only indirectly at the Phaedo: even a simple soul could cease to exist by a gradual loss of intensity rather than by being split into parts, so simplicity does not prove permanence.
›The argument from recollectionPlato · argumentWe acquired knowledge of the Forms before birth and recover it by recollection when perception reminds us; so the soul existed, with intelligence, before it entered the body.
1We know what Equality itself is, since we judge sensible equal things by it.
2Sensible equals, such as equal sticks and stones, always fall short of Equality itself, and we recognise that they do.
3To judge that something falls short of a standard, we must already know the standard.
4We have been perceiving sensible equals since birth, so we cannot have gained knowledge of Equality itself from perception during this life.
∴We acquired knowledge of the Forms before birth and recover it by recollection when perception reminds us; so the soul existed, with intelligence, before it entered the body.
Aristotle objects. It is absurd to suppose we possess the most precise knowledge of first principles without noticing it. We acquire it through perception, memory, experience and induction, and the intellect starts like an unwritten tablet.
Plato objects. Simmias and Cebes, in the dialogue itself, grant that recollection proves pre-existence but not survival after death, which is why further arguments are needed.
›The cyclical argument (Phaedo)Plato · argumentThe living come from the dead as the dead from the living, so the souls of the dead exist somewhere, from which they return to life. Cebes at once asks for more, that the soul keeps its intelligence, which the recollection argument is brought in to supply.
1Whatever has an opposite comes to be from its opposite and only from it, as the larger from the smaller and the waking from the sleeping.
2Between each pair of opposites there are two processes, one in each direction, such as falling asleep and waking up.
3Living and being dead are opposites, and dying, the process from living to dead, is plain to see.
4Nature is not lame on one side, so there must also be the reverse process, coming back to life from the dead.
5If generation went in a straight line and never came round again, everything would end up dead and nothing would be alive.
∴The living come from the dead as the dead from the living, so the souls of the dead exist somewhere, from which they return to life. Cebes at once asks for more, that the soul keeps its intelligence, which the recollection argument is brought in to supply.
Epicurus objects. Grant that matter is never lost and is endlessly recombined: what returns is atoms, not souls. The soul is a body of fine atoms that disperses when its containing body is destroyed, so it no longer has its powers or its sensation, and nothing personal comes back.
David Hume objects. Arguments of this metaphysical kind prove too much: what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable, so an immortal soul existed before birth, and if that earlier existence did not concern us, neither will a later one. Analogy from nature points the other way, since whatever we observe comes to be and passes away.
›The final argument from the soul as bringer of life (Phaedo)Plato · argumentWhen death approaches a person, the mortal part dies, but the soul withdraws unharmed and undestroyed; the soul is immortal and imperishable and will exist in another world. The step from deathless (never being dead) to imperishable (never ceasing to exist) rests on an appeal to general agreement, and Socrates himself says the first assumptions need further examination.
1An opposite itself, such as the large in us, never admits its opposite; when the opposite approaches it either withdraws or perishes.
2Some things that are not opposites always bring an opposite with them and so also exclude its contrary, as three always brings oddness and never admits the even, and fire brings heat and never admits cold.
3Whatever the soul occupies it always brings life to, so the soul never admits death, the opposite of life, and is deathless.
4What is deathless is also imperishable, since if the deathless and everlasting could perish nothing at all would escape destruction.
∴When death approaches a person, the mortal part dies, but the soul withdraws unharmed and undestroyed; the soul is immortal and imperishable and will exist in another world. The step from deathless (never being dead) to imperishable (never ceasing to exist) rests on an appeal to general agreement, and Socrates himself says the first assumptions need further examination.
Plato objects. In the dialogue itself Socrates names the gap: the odd never becomes even, yet it might perish and give way to the even, so being deathless (never being dead) yields imperishability only if the deathless is granted to be imperishable. Simmias keeps a doubt, and Socrates agrees that the first assumptions must be examined further.
Epicurus objects. Death is not something the soul could admit or flee, since it is simply the end of sensation: when the body is dissolved its soul-atoms scatter and nothing remains that feels.
David Hume objects. No argument from the nature of the soul can establish immortality, since we have no idea of substance from which such conclusions could follow; the analogy of nature, in which nothing is perpetual and every form is changing, tells against it.
Is Plato's argument for dividing the soul into three parts convincing? Does it explain weakness of will, or why justice belongs to happiness?
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›Virtue and knowledgePlatoKnowledge plus habituation* (contested reading)
In the Republic the soul has parts that can conflict, so knowing what is best does not by itself ensure acting on it: appetite can drag a person against his reasoning, and spirit and appetite must be trained by music, gymnastics and habit to follow reason. Virtue is reason's wisdom together with the agreement of the trained lower parts.
Across the works. In the early Protagoras Socrates argues that knowledge rules whoever has it and that acting against one's knowledge of the best is impossible (352b–358d).
Contested readingRepublic IV (middle; speaker Socrates); contrast Protagoras (early)arete, episteme, logistikon, thumoeides, paideia, akrasiaDraft — not yet reviewed
The trap here is attributing the Socratic thesis to Plato wholesale. Even in the Republic it is unclear whether someone with full knowledge, not mere belief, could act against it.
›The highest goodPlatoFlourishing through virtue* (contested reading)
Happiness lies in a just soul, in which reason rules spirit and appetite with their agreement. Virtue is the soul's health and injustice its disease, so the just person is happier than the unjust whatever else befalls him, and justice is good both in itself and for what comes of it.
Another reading. The highest life is contemplative: becoming like god as far as possible (Theaetetus 176a–b), the philosopher's vision of the Good (Republic VII) and the ascent to Beauty itself (Symposium 210a–212a), which practical virtue serves.
Contested readingGorgias (early); Republic II–IV, IX (middle); Theaetetus (late-middle); speaker Socrateseudaimonia, dikaiosyne, arete, harmonia, homoiosis theoiDraft — not yet reviewed
Whether virtue suffices for happiness, as the Gorgias suggests, or is only its dominant constituent is debated for Plato's Socrates (Vlastos 1984); the option does not separate the two.
›The argument for the parts of the soulPlato · argumentThe soul has three distinct parts: reason, spirit and appetite; justice is their right order, with reason ruling.
1The same thing cannot do or undergo opposites in the same respect, in relation to the same thing, at the same time.
2A thirsty person can at the same time desire to drink and refuse to drink.
3The refusal comes from reasoning and the desire from appetite.
4Anger can side with reason against appetite (as when Leontius rages at his own desire to look at corpses) yet differs from reason, since children and animals have it without reason.
∴The soul has three distinct parts: reason, spirit and appetite; justice is their right order, with reason ruling.
Aristotle objects. Dividing the soul into reason, spirit and appetite is arbitrary; by the same logic one could posit indefinitely many parts, and desire would be split across them. The soul's capacities should be distinguished by their functions.
David Hume objects. Reason alone cannot oppose a passion; it only informs desire about means and matters of fact. What looks like reason resisting appetite is a calm passion, mistaken for reason because it produces little felt emotion, prevailing over a violent one.
Explain Plato's theory of the Forms. What problem was it supposed to solve, and how was it supposed to solve it?
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›Being and realityPlatoSeparate Forms
What truly is are the Forms: eternal, unchanging, intelligible natures such as the Just itself or the Equal itself, which sensible things participate in and are named after. Sensibles come to be and pass away and are never fully what they are called. Above the Forms stands the Good, the source of their being and intelligibility, which surpasses being in dignity and power.
Another reading. Aristotle reports that Plato made the One and the Great-and-Small (the Indefinite Dyad) the principles of the Forms themselves (Metaphysics A.6, 987b18–988a17). The Tübingen school (Krämer, Gaiser) reconstructs from such reports an unwritten doctrine in which the Good of the Republic is the One, the first principle from which the Forms derive.
Scholarly consensusmiddle dialogues (Phaedo, Republic; speaker Socrates); criticised in the late-middle Parmenides 130a–135c; retained in the late Timaeus (speaker Timaeus)eidos, idea, ousia, methexis, to agathon, epekeina tes ousiasDraft — not yet reviewed
Calling this "idealism" is a modern misnomer: the Forms are mind-independent realities, not ideas in a mind. How far the late dialogues revise the theory after the Parmenides is debated. The option `the-one` is defined in Plotinian terms; the alternative uses it only for a derivation of the Forms from a first principle.
Wherever many things are called by one name there is one Form, which exists by itself, apart from the particulars and from our minds; particulars have their character by participating in it, as beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. The Parmenides presses hard on how participation can work and rejects the suggestion that Forms are thoughts in minds (132b–c), yet concludes that without Forms thought and discourse would be impossible.
Scholarly consensusmiddle dialogues (speaker Socrates); tested in the late-middle Parmenides (Parmenides questioning the young Socrates)eidos, methexis, mimesis, paradeigma, auto kath' hautoDraft — not yet reviewed
Forms are not just universals: they are perfect paradigms that seem to be what they are in the highest degree (the Beautiful is beautiful), which is what invites the Third Man regress.
›One over manyPlato · argumentFor each plurality called by one name there is one Form, existing by itself, in which the many participate.
1Whenever many things are called by the same name, there is some one character they share (Republic 596a).
2That one character is not identical with any one of the many things, nor with all of them together.
3What the many share must exist in its own right for them to share in it; a craftsman makes beds by looking to the Form of bed, but makes no Form (596b).
4A separate argument, from compresence (Republic 479a–c), adds that each sensible F also appears not-F, so no sensible can be what F itself is.
∴For each plurality called by one name there is one Form, existing by itself, in which the many participate.
Plato objects. The Parmenides turns the argument on itself: if large things share one Form of Largeness, then the Form and the large things, viewed together, share a further Largeness, and so on without end.
Aristotle objects. The one-over-many argument proves at most that there are universals, not separate Forms, and taken strictly it yields the Third Man and Forms of things Platonists deny have Forms.
›Knowledge and opinion have different objectsPlato · argumentThe sensible many are objects of opinion; only the Forms, which are always the same, are objects of knowledge. (This is the "objects" or two-worlds reconstruction. On the veridical reading, Fine 1978, "set over what is" means set over what is true: knowledge entails truth and opinion does not, the two may share objects, and the argument does not by itself require Forms.)
1Knowledge is set over what is, ignorance over what is not.
2Knowledge and opinion are different powers, since knowledge is infallible and opinion is not, and different powers are set over different objects.
3So opinion is set over something between what is and what is not.
4The many beautiful things also appear ugly, the many just things unjust, the many doubles halves; each sensible both is and is not what it is called.
∴The sensible many are objects of opinion; only the Forms, which are always the same, are objects of knowledge. (This is the "objects" or two-worlds reconstruction. On the veridical reading, Fine 1978, "set over what is" means set over what is true: knowledge entails truth and opinion does not, the two may share objects, and the argument does not by itself require Forms.)
Aristotle objects. Socrates was right to seek universal definitions but did not separate them; Plato made the Forms separate because he accepted the Heraclitean flux of sensibles. Knowledge is of universals, but universals exist in sensible things, so separation is unnecessary.
State the premises of the Third Man Argument and the regress. Should Plato take it as a refutation, and what would Aristotle reject?
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›UniversalsPlatoRealism before things
Wherever many things are called by one name there is one Form, which exists by itself, apart from the particulars and from our minds; particulars have their character by participating in it, as beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. The Parmenides presses hard on how participation can work and rejects the suggestion that Forms are thoughts in minds (132b–c), yet concludes that without Forms thought and discourse would be impossible.
Scholarly consensusmiddle dialogues (speaker Socrates); tested in the late-middle Parmenides (Parmenides questioning the young Socrates)eidos, methexis, mimesis, paradeigma, auto kath' hautoDraft — not yet reviewed
Forms are not just universals: they are perfect paradigms that seem to be what they are in the highest degree (the Beautiful is beautiful), which is what invites the Third Man regress.
A universal is what is by nature predicated of many, and it is real, but it does not exist separately from the particulars it is predicated of. No universal is a substance; separating universals from particulars, as Plato did, is the error that generates the difficulties of the Forms. Universals exist in things and are grasped by the intellect from them.
Scholarly consensusCategories; De Interpretatione 7; Metaphysics Z.13, Mkatholou, kath' hekaston, ousia, choristonDraft — not yet reviewed
›The Third Man against separate FormsAristotle · argumentSeparate Forms lead to an infinite regress; what is predicated of many is a universal, not a separate substance, so Forms should not be posited apart from things. The premises are a modern reconstruction (Vlastos 1954, naming self-predication and non-identity): Aristotle only names the Third Man in the Metaphysics, and its fullest ancient form is Alexander's report of the lost On Ideas, with a variant in the Sophistical Refutations.
1One over many: wherever many things share one character, Platonists posit one separate Form of that character.
2Self-predication: the Form is itself characterised by what it is the Form of, so the Form of Man, like individual men, is a man.
3Non-identity: the Form is separate from, and not identical with, the things that share in it.
4So the Form of Man together with individual men are a new many sharing one character, which by the first premise requires a further, third Man, and so on without end.
∴Separate Forms lead to an infinite regress; what is predicated of many is a universal, not a separate substance, so Forms should not be posited apart from things. The premises are a modern reconstruction (Vlastos 1954, naming self-predication and non-identity): Aristotle only names the Third Man in the Metaphysics, and its fullest ancient form is Alexander's report of the lost On Ideas, with a variant in the Sophistical Refutations.
Plato objects. Plato raised the regress himself in the Parmenides, yet still held that without Forms there would be nothing for thought to fix on and discourse would be destroyed.
›One over manyPlato · argumentFor each plurality called by one name there is one Form, existing by itself, in which the many participate.
1Whenever many things are called by the same name, there is some one character they share (Republic 596a).
2That one character is not identical with any one of the many things, nor with all of them together.
3What the many share must exist in its own right for them to share in it; a craftsman makes beds by looking to the Form of bed, but makes no Form (596b).
4A separate argument, from compresence (Republic 479a–c), adds that each sensible F also appears not-F, so no sensible can be what F itself is.
∴For each plurality called by one name there is one Form, existing by itself, in which the many participate.
Plato objects. The Parmenides turns the argument on itself: if large things share one Form of Largeness, then the Form and the large things, viewed together, share a further Largeness, and so on without end.
Aristotle objects. The one-over-many argument proves at most that there are universals, not separate Forms, and taken strictly it yields the Third Man and Forms of things Platonists deny have Forms.
What are the objects of knowledge for Plato and Aristotle? How does each philosopher argue for his position?
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›Certainty, doubt and the limits of knowledgePlatoYes* (contested reading)
Plato's question is less whether certainty is possible than how knowledge differs from opinion. In Republic V knowledge is an infallible power set over what is, and opinion a fallible power set over what both is and is not; the dialectician who reaches the Good can give an account that survives every refutation. Fallibility belongs to opinion, not to knowledge as such, though the Socrates of the Republic disclaims having that knowledge of the Good himself (506b–e).
Across the works. In the early dialogues Socrates disclaims knowledge of the most important things and the discussions end in aporia (Apology 21b–23b); the confident epistemology of the Republic is a later development.
Another reading. The sceptical Academy, from Arcesilaus to Carneades, read Plato himself as an aporetic inquirer who asserts nothing, pointing to the dialogue form and to the Theaetetus, which ends without a definition of knowledge.
Contested readingRepublic V–VII (middle; speaker Socrates); contrast the early dialogues and the late-middle Theaetetusepisteme, doxa, logos, dialektikeDraft — not yet reviewed
The summary follows the traditional "objects" (two-worlds) reading of Republic V. On the veridical reading (Fine 1978), knowledge and opinion differ in whether their contents are guaranteed true, not in having different objects; the stance is unchanged, but the argument for it is different.
The senses report things that change and that both are and are not what they are called, so they cannot supply stable knowledge. Knowledge is the soul's grasp of the Forms, which it recovers by recollection when perception reminds it; perception occasions the recovery but is not its source. A true belief becomes knowledge only when reason ties it down by working out the explanation (aitias logismos).
Scholarly consensusMeno (transitional) and middle dialogues (Phaedo, Republic VI); speaker Socratesanamnesis, episteme, doxa, noesis, aitias logismosDraft — not yet reviewed
"Reason alone" understates the role Plato gives to perception as the occasion of recollection (Phaedo 74a–75d), but he never treats perception as a source of knowledge.
›Sources of knowledgeAristotleExperience, completed by intellect
All knowledge starts from perception. Repeated perceptions leave memories, many memories of the same thing make up experience, and from experience the universal comes to rest in the soul as the starting point of art and science. Intellect (nous) then grasps the first principles that induction has made familiar, so the stability of knowledge comes from universals that are present in particulars and are drawn out of them.
Stated in the textPosterior Analytics II.19; Metaphysics A.1; De Anima III.8aisthesis, mneme, empeiria, epagoge, nous, techne, epistemeDraft — not yet reviewed
›Certainty, doubt and the limits of knowledgeAristotleYes
Scientific knowledge (episteme) is of what cannot be otherwise, reached by demonstration from first principles that are true, primary and immediate; those principles are grasped by nous and are not themselves demonstrated. The principle of non-contradiction is the firmest of all and cannot be doubted coherently. But each subject admits only its own degree of precision: ethics and politics hold only for the most part.
A universal is what is by nature predicated of many, and it is real, but it does not exist separately from the particulars it is predicated of. No universal is a substance; separating universals from particulars, as Plato did, is the error that generates the difficulties of the Forms. Universals exist in things and are grasped by the intellect from them.
Scholarly consensusCategories; De Interpretatione 7; Metaphysics Z.13, Mkatholou, kath' hekaston, ousia, choristonDraft — not yet reviewed
›Knowledge and opinion have different objectsPlato · argumentThe sensible many are objects of opinion; only the Forms, which are always the same, are objects of knowledge. (This is the "objects" or two-worlds reconstruction. On the veridical reading, Fine 1978, "set over what is" means set over what is true: knowledge entails truth and opinion does not, the two may share objects, and the argument does not by itself require Forms.)
1Knowledge is set over what is, ignorance over what is not.
2Knowledge and opinion are different powers, since knowledge is infallible and opinion is not, and different powers are set over different objects.
3So opinion is set over something between what is and what is not.
4The many beautiful things also appear ugly, the many just things unjust, the many doubles halves; each sensible both is and is not what it is called.
∴The sensible many are objects of opinion; only the Forms, which are always the same, are objects of knowledge. (This is the "objects" or two-worlds reconstruction. On the veridical reading, Fine 1978, "set over what is" means set over what is true: knowledge entails truth and opinion does not, the two may share objects, and the argument does not by itself require Forms.)
Aristotle objects. Socrates was right to seek universal definitions but did not separate them; Plato made the Forms separate because he accepted the Heraclitean flux of sensibles. Knowledge is of universals, but universals exist in sensible things, so separation is unnecessary.
What does Aristotle mean by calling the soul the first actuality of the body? Is it separable, and is the account compatible with materialism?
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›Soul and bodyAristotleHylomorphism
The soul is the form, or first actuality, of a natural body that has life potentially. It is no more sensible to ask whether soul and body are one than to ask this of the wax and its shape. So the soul is not separable from the body, except perhaps for some part that is not the actuality of any bodily organ.
Stated in the textDe Anima II.1–2, III.4psyche, entelecheia, eidos, hyle, soma organikonDraft — not yet reviewed
On the standard reading Aristotle is not a materialist: the soul is form, not fine matter, and intellect is said to be unmixed with the body. Functionalist and materialist readings of De Anima are defended in the literature, and the exception for intellect is where the hylomorphic picture strains.
›Death and immortalityAristotleOnly intellect, impersonally* (contested reading)
Since the soul is the form of the body, it perishes with the body, with the possible exception of intellect. De Anima III.5 says that the intellect which makes all things is separable, unaffected and unmixed, and that this alone is immortal and eternal; it adds that we do not remember, since the intellect that is affected perishes. On the reading coded here something intellectual survives without memory or character, but whose intellect it is, and what we fail to remember, are the most disputed questions in the treatise.
Another reading. Alexander of Aphrodisias, and among modern scholars Caston (1999), identify the productive intellect with God, not a part of the human soul; on this reading the human soul is wholly mortal and nothing of the individual survives.
Another reading. Aquinas read the productive intellect as a power of each individual soul, so each human intellect, and the soul whose form it is, survives death.
Contested readingDe Anima I.4, II.2, III.5nous poietikos, nous pathetikos, choristos, athanatos, aidiosDraft — not yet reviewed
›The soul is the form of a living bodyAristotle · argumentThe soul is the form of the living body; soul and body are one as the wax and its shape are one, and the soul (or at least most of it) is not separable from the body.
1Substance is said in three ways, as matter, as form, and as the compound of the two.
2A natural body that has life is a substance in the sense of a compound.
3The body is not what is said of a subject but the subject itself, that is, matter.
4So the soul, which makes the body alive, must be substance as form, the first actuality of a natural body that has life potentially.
∴The soul is the form of the living body; soul and body are one as the wax and its shape are one, and the soul (or at least most of it) is not separable from the body.
René Descartes objects. I can clearly and distinctly understand myself as a thinking thing apart from body, and what can be so understood apart can be made to exist apart by God; so the mind is a substance really distinct from the body.
Ibn Sina objects. A person created in mid-air, without sensing any part of their body, would still affirm their own existence; so the self is grasped as something other than the body. Ibn Sina presents this as an alerting (tanbih) toward the soul's being a substance in its own right, not as a demonstration, and its force is debated.
What does Aristotle mean by happiness as activity of the soul in accordance with virtue? Does it follow that contemplation is the best life?
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›The highest goodAristotleFlourishing through virtue* (contested reading)
The highest good is eudaimonia, which is complete and self-sufficient. The function argument shows it to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and in the best and most complete virtue, over a complete life. Book X then ranks the contemplative life first and the life of practical virtue second.
Another reading. Intellectualist or dominant-end reading (Kraut 1989): eudaimonia in the strict sense is theoretical contemplation alone, as Nicomachean Ethics X.7–8 says; the life of practical virtue is happy only in a secondary way.
Contested readingNicomachean Ethics I.7 vs X.7–8eudaimonia, ergon, energeia, arete, theoria, teleionDraft — not yet reviewed
The main code follows the inclusive reading (Ackrill 1974), on which eudaimonia comprises all intrinsically worthwhile activities, chief among them virtuous action. The inclusive versus dominant-end dispute is a dispute over exactly these two options.
›The function argumentAristotle · argumentThe human good is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete, over a complete life.
1For anything that has a function, its good lies in performing that function well.
2Human beings have a function, as each bodily organ and each craftsman does.
3The human function is not nutrition or perception, which we share with plants and animals, but an active life of the part of the soul that has reason.
4Performing a function well is performing it in accordance with the relevant virtue.
∴The human good is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete, over a complete life.
Immanuel Kant objects. A contrast rather than a refutation. Kant argues that if nature had meant reason for our happiness it chose badly, since instinct would serve happiness better, so reason's purpose is to produce a will good in itself. His target is happiness as the satisfaction of inclination (Glückseligkeit), not eudaimonia as excellent activity, and his own argument is teleological in form, reasoning from the function of reason as Aristotle does.
David Hume objects. No conclusion about what one ought to do follows from premises about what is the case; a fact about human nature or function cannot by itself establish a good. The Aristotelian reply is that "function" is already an evaluative concept: to know what a knife or a harpist is for is to know what a good one is (MacIntyre 1981).
What is a substance for Aristotle? What kinds of substances are there, and what role do they play in his account of the world?
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›Being and realityAristotleSubstances
Being is said in many ways, but primarily of substance, and in the Categories the primary substances are individuals such as this man or this horse; everything else is said of them or exists in them. In the Metaphysics the question becomes what makes something a substance, and the answer is its form or essence, the cause of its being. The highest substance is the unmoved mover, eternal form without matter.
Scholarly consensusCategories 5; Metaphysics Z, H, Λousia, tode ti, hyle, morphe, eidos, to ti en einai, energeiaDraft — not yet reviewed
Whether the form that is primary substance in Metaphysics Z is particular, one per individual (Frede and Patzig 1988), or the species form shared by all members of a kind is disputed; either way the code holds, since the option covers forms that do not exist apart from their substances.
A universal is what is by nature predicated of many, and it is real, but it does not exist separately from the particulars it is predicated of. No universal is a substance; separating universals from particulars, as Plato did, is the error that generates the difficulties of the Forms. Universals exist in things and are grasped by the intellect from them.
Scholarly consensusCategories; De Interpretatione 7; Metaphysics Z.13, Mkatholou, kath' hekaston, ousia, choristonDraft — not yet reviewed
›The argument for an unmoved moverAristotle · argumentThere is an eternal, unmoved, immaterial first mover, pure actuality, whose life is thought thinking itself; on it the heavens and nature depend.
1Motion and time are eternal.
2Eternal motion requires an eternal substance that causes it.
3A cause that had any potentiality might fail to act, so the cause of eternal motion must be pure actuality, without matter.
4What is pure actuality cannot itself be moved; it moves other things as an object of desire and thought moves, without being moved.
∴There is an eternal, unmoved, immaterial first mover, pure actuality, whose life is thought thinking itself; on it the heavens and nature depend.
Immanuel Kant objects. Kant's critique of the cosmological proof is aimed at the later argument from contingency and its tacit reliance on the ontological argument, which Aristotle's argument from motion does not make. What carries over is the first charge: the principle that everything moved has a cause has meaning only within possible experience, so it cannot take us to a first cause outside the series of appearances.
David Hume objects. When we infer a cause from its effects we may ascribe to it only what is needed to produce those effects; nothing licenses inferring a perfect, single, purely actual being.
Using examples from the Platonic dialogues, explain the difference between philosophy and sophistry.
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How Socrates philosophisesmethod
Socrates, as Plato's early dialogues present him, examines people who claim to know by question and answer (the elenchus), while disavowing any wisdom of his own beyond knowing that he does not know. Since he wrote nothing, his method is known only through Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle, who do not describe it in the same way.
›Rhetoric and sophistry are flattery, not crafts (Gorgias)Socrates · argumentRhetoric as practised, and sophistry with it, are not crafts but kinds of flattery, semblances of a part of politics that gratify the soul without improving it. Philosophy differs from sophistry as knowledge aimed at the good of the soul differs from a knack aimed at its pleasure, which is why Socrates claims to be almost alone in practising the true art of statesmanship. (The later Sophist, without Socrates as the leading speaker, defines the sophist through a series of divisions instead: paid hunter of the young, merchant of learning, contestant in disputation.)
1A craft aims at the best condition of its object and can give an account of the nature of what it treats and the cause of what it does.
2A knack, gained by experience and guesswork, aims at what pleases and can give no such account.
3Body and soul each have a real good condition and a merely apparent one. The crafts that care for the body are gymnastic and medicine; those that care for the soul are legislation and justice, the two parts of politics.
4Flattery slips into each craft's place and imitates it by aiming at pleasure. Cosmetics imitates gymnastic, cookery imitates medicine, sophistry imitates legislation, and rhetoric imitates justice.
5Judged by pleasure, before boys or men as foolish as boys, the cook would beat the doctor; so a crowd's preference for the orator shows nothing about who knows what is good.
∴Rhetoric as practised, and sophistry with it, are not crafts but kinds of flattery, semblances of a part of politics that gratify the soul without improving it. Philosophy differs from sophistry as knowledge aimed at the good of the soul differs from a knack aimed at its pleasure, which is why Socrates claims to be almost alone in practising the true art of statesmanship. (The later Sophist, without Socrates as the leading speaker, defines the sophist through a series of divisions instead: paid hunter of the young, merchant of learning, contestant in disputation.)
Protagoras objects. In Plato's Protagoras the sophist claims to teach exactly the political craft Socrates says sophistry only imitates: good judgement in managing one's household and city, so as to make men good citizens. In his Great Speech he argues that civic virtue is taught by everyone, so a teacher who does it a little better than others is worth his fee.
Aristotle objects. The opening of Aristotle's Rhetoric answers the Gorgias directly: rhetoric is the counterpart (antistrophos) of dialectic, not of cookery. It is a craft with a method, the study of the available means of persuasion, and its proofs are a kind of demonstration. Abuse of it no more condemns it than abuse of strength or health condemns them.
Does the doctrine of recollection solve the problem posed by the paradox of inquiry? Can you offer a better solution?
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›Innate knowledgePlatoInnate knowledge
Learning is recollection. Questioned step by step, an untaught slave recovers geometrical truths from within himself, and we judge sensible equals deficient only because we already know Equality itself. The soul therefore has knowledge that it did not get from perception in this life; experience only prompts it to recover what it has.
Scholarly consensusMeno, Phaedo, Phaedrus (transitional and middle); speaker Socratesanamnesis, psyche, eidosDraft — not yet reviewed
The two main texts differ on how the soul came to have this knowledge. The Meno leaves open whether it was acquired or always possessed and concludes that the truth is always in the soul (85d–86b); the Phaedo says it was acquired before birth and lost at birth (75c–76c). Neither is innateness in the early-modern sense of ideas built into the mind.
›Meno's paradox and the answer from recollectionPlato · argumentInquiry is possible because the knower is in a middle state: the truth is in the soul but must be recovered by questioning, so one can seek what one does not now consciously know and recognise it when found. Socrates himself will vouch only for the practical conclusion, that believing in inquiry makes us better and braver than believing it impossible; the doctrine of recollection is offered with less confidence. The Phaedo uses recollection to prove pre-existence (plato-recollection).
1The paradox: one cannot inquire into what one knows, since one has no need to, nor into what one does not know, since one would not know what to look for or recognise it when found.
2The answer: the soul is immortal, has been born many times and has learned all things, so what is called learning is recollection.
3The demonstration: Meno's slave, untaught in geometry, is led by questions alone from false answers through perplexity to the true answer, that the square on the diagonal is double the original square.
4The true opinions he reaches are his own, not supplied by Socrates, and repeated questioning would turn them into knowledge.
5He did not acquire them in this life, so he must have had them before he was a human being.
∴Inquiry is possible because the knower is in a middle state: the truth is in the soul but must be recovered by questioning, so one can seek what one does not now consciously know and recognise it when found. Socrates himself will vouch only for the practical conclusion, that believing in inquiry makes us better and braver than believing it impossible; the doctrine of recollection is offered with less confidence. The Phaedo uses recollection to prove pre-existence (plato-recollection).
Aristotle objects. Aristotle names the puzzle in the Meno and dissolves it without recollection: one may know a conclusion universally (that every triangle has angles equal to two right angles) without knowing it of this particular figure, so learning is passing from a qualified to an unqualified knowledge. First principles are reached through perception, memory, experience and induction.
David Hume objects. Every idea is copied from an earlier impression of sense or reflection; a person without a sense lacks its ideas. So there is no stock of knowledge carried in from a previous existence, and what the slave displays is his ability to compare ideas he already has from experience.
Plato objects. In the dialogue itself Socrates declines to vouch for most of the argument, standing firm only on the claim that we should inquire. What the demonstration shows for certain is that questioning can bring someone to recognise a truth he was not told; that the knowledge was had before birth is a further step.
›The argument from recollectionPlato · argumentWe acquired knowledge of the Forms before birth and recover it by recollection when perception reminds us; so the soul existed, with intelligence, before it entered the body.
1We know what Equality itself is, since we judge sensible equal things by it.
2Sensible equals, such as equal sticks and stones, always fall short of Equality itself, and we recognise that they do.
3To judge that something falls short of a standard, we must already know the standard.
4We have been perceiving sensible equals since birth, so we cannot have gained knowledge of Equality itself from perception during this life.
∴We acquired knowledge of the Forms before birth and recover it by recollection when perception reminds us; so the soul existed, with intelligence, before it entered the body.
Aristotle objects. It is absurd to suppose we possess the most precise knowledge of first principles without noticing it. We acquire it through perception, memory, experience and induction, and the intellect starts like an unwritten tablet.
Plato objects. Simmias and Cebes, in the dialogue itself, grant that recollection proves pre-existence but not survival after death, which is why further arguments are needed.
What arguments does Socrates give against Simmias' view that the soul is a harmony? Are they convincing?
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›Socrates' replies to Simmias' attunement theoryPlato · argumentThe soul is not an attunement of the body; it rules the body and is more divine than any attunement. The replies dispose of Simmias' model but not of the wider worry that the soul depends on the body, which Cebes presses next and the final argument answers.
1Simmias' objection: the soul is an attunement (harmonia) of the body's elements, as the tuning of a lyre is of its strings, and so perishes with them or before them.
2First reply: an attunement cannot exist before the elements it is composed of, but Simmias accepts recollection, which shows the soul existed before the body.
3Second reply: one attunement can be more or less tuned than another, but no soul is more or less a soul than another. If virtue were attunement and vice discord, no soul could be vicious, and all souls would be equally good.
4Third reply: an attunement follows its components and cannot oppose them, but the soul leads and opposes the body's desires, as when Odysseus rebukes his own heart.
∴The soul is not an attunement of the body; it rules the body and is more divine than any attunement. The replies dispose of Simmias' model but not of the wider worry that the soul depends on the body, which Cebes presses next and the final argument answers.
Aristotle objects. Aristotle also rejects the attunement theory, but not in favour of Socrates' alternative. The soul is the form and first actuality of a living body, not a separate thing that rules it, so showing that the soul is no attunement does not show that it can exist apart from the body.
David Hume objects. Everything we observe suggests Simmias' dependence: the weakness of body and mind in infancy, their vigour in maturity, their common disorder in sickness and gradual decay in old age are proportioned, so the mind will most likely share the body's dissolution.
›The affinity argument for the soul's immortalityPlato · argumentThe soul is most like the divine, deathless and unchanging, and the body like the mortal and dissoluble; so the soul is altogether indissoluble, or nearly so.
1There are two kinds of things, the invisible, uncomposed and unchanging, and the visible, composite and changing.
2Only what is composite is liable to be dispersed and destroyed.
3The soul is invisible and, when it reasons by itself, is drawn to and resembles the unchanging Forms, whereas the body is visible and changing.
4It is natural for the soul to rule and the body to serve, as the divine rules and the mortal serves.
∴The soul is most like the divine, deathless and unchanging, and the body like the mortal and dissoluble; so the soul is altogether indissoluble, or nearly so.
Aristotle objects. The soul is the form of the body, not a separate thing resembling the Forms; like the shape of the wax, it is not separable from the body, except perhaps for intellect.
Epicurus objects. The soul is a body of fine atoms spread through the whole frame; when the containing body is destroyed its atoms disperse, so the soul has no perception after death.
Plato objects. Simmias, in the dialogue itself: the soul may be an attunement of the body's elements, like the attunement of a lyre, which is invisible and divine-seeming yet perishes before the wood and strings; affinity with the invisible does not show that the soul outlasts the body.
Plato objects. Cebes, in the dialogue itself: grant that the soul is stronger and longer-lasting than the body, as a weaver outlasts many cloaks; it may still wear out over many bodies and perish in the end, so durability is not immortality.
Immanuel Kant objects. Aimed at Mendelssohn's proof from the soul's simplicity (Phädon, 1767), and so only indirectly at the Phaedo: even a simple soul could cease to exist by a gradual loss of intensity rather than by being split into parts, so simplicity does not prove permanence.
Does the Republic convincingly show that a person with Gyges' ring would benefit more from being just than unjust?
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›The highest goodPlatoFlourishing through virtue* (contested reading)
Happiness lies in a just soul, in which reason rules spirit and appetite with their agreement. Virtue is the soul's health and injustice its disease, so the just person is happier than the unjust whatever else befalls him, and justice is good both in itself and for what comes of it.
Another reading. The highest life is contemplative: becoming like god as far as possible (Theaetetus 176a–b), the philosopher's vision of the Good (Republic VII) and the ascent to Beauty itself (Symposium 210a–212a), which practical virtue serves.
Contested readingGorgias (early); Republic II–IV, IX (middle); Theaetetus (late-middle); speaker Socrateseudaimonia, dikaiosyne, arete, harmonia, homoiosis theoiDraft — not yet reviewed
Whether virtue suffices for happiness, as the Gorgias suggests, or is only its dominant constituent is debated for Plato's Socrates (Vlastos 1984); the option does not separate the two.
›Glaucon's challenge and the ring of GygesPlato · argumentSocrates must show that justice is good in itself, apart from its rewards and reputation, and that the just person is happier than the unjust even in the extreme case; this is the task of the rest of the Republic, answered first in Book IV (plato-tripartite-soul) and then in Book IX (plato-justice-happiest). Glaucon states the view without holding it.
1Goods are of three kinds, those welcomed for their own sake, those for their own sake and their results, and those welcomed only for their results; most people put justice in the third.
2By nature doing injustice is good and suffering it bad, and since the evil of suffering exceeds the good of doing, the weak agree not to do or suffer injustice; justice is that compact, a compromise between the best and the worst.
3Give the just and the unjust man the ring of Gyges, which makes its wearer invisible, and both will behave the same way, so no one is just willingly but only from constraint.
4Compare the perfectly unjust man who seems just and enjoys every reward of reputation with the perfectly just man who seems unjust and is tortured and killed; most people judge the first happier.
∴Socrates must show that justice is good in itself, apart from its rewards and reputation, and that the just person is happier than the unjust even in the extreme case; this is the task of the rest of the Republic, answered first in Book IV (plato-tripartite-soul) and then in Book IX (plato-justice-happiest). Glaucon states the view without holding it.
Epicurus objects. Epicurus accepts the compact account of justice but denies that the ring is a real option: no one who breaks the compact in secret can be confident of remaining undiscovered, so the unjust life carries a lifelong fear that destroys tranquillity (epicurus-justice-as-contract).
David Hume objects. Hume's sensible knave is a Gyges who sees that an occasional undetected injustice would profit him. Hume concedes that if such a man thinks the reasoning needs an answer it will be hard to find one that satisfies him, and rests on the inward peace and integrity the knave gives up.
›The Book IX proofs that the just life is happiestPlato · argumentJustice pays: the just person is happier than the unjust, whether or not gods and men know his character, and this is the final answer to Glaucon's challenge after the Book IV argument that justice is the health of the soul. Whether it meets the challenge on its own terms is disputed: Sachs (1963) argues that Plato shows the well-ordered soul is happy, not that it refrains from what is ordinarily called injustice.
1First proof, from political analogy: the soul of the tyrannical man mirrors the city ruled by a tyrant, with its best parts enslaved to the worst; it is full of fear, want and regret, so the tyrant is the most wretched and the kingly, just man the happiest.
2Second proof, from the judge: each part of the soul has its own pleasure, of learning, of honour and of gain. Only the philosopher has experienced all three and has intelligence and argument, the instruments of judgement, so his verdict that his own pleasure is best is authoritative.
3Third proof, from true pleasure: what most people call pleasure is often only relief from pain, which seems pleasant by contrast. Filling the soul with what more truly is gives truer and purer pleasure than filling the body.
4The image of the soul as a many-headed beast, a lion and a man shows that injustice feeds the beast and starves the man, so it profits no one to enslave the best part of himself even for gold.
∴Justice pays: the just person is happier than the unjust, whether or not gods and men know his character, and this is the final answer to Glaucon's challenge after the Book IV argument that justice is the health of the soul. Whether it meets the challenge on its own terms is disputed: Sachs (1963) argues that Plato shows the well-ordered soul is happy, not that it refrains from what is ordinarily called injustice.
Aristotle objects. Virtue is not sufficient for happiness. A person may have virtue and yet suffer the greatest misfortunes, and no one would call such a person happy except to defend a thesis; those who say the good man on the rack is happy are talking nonsense.
Epicurus objects. The third proof rests on denying that the calm state free of pain is pleasure. For Epicurus the removal of all pain is the limit of pleasure, so the philosopher's alleged truer pleasures have no special standing, and justice is chosen for the security it brings.
Friedrich Nietzsche objects. The Socratic equation of reason, virtue and happiness is a symptom of decline: a remedy of those who had to make reason a tyrant over the instincts, not a discovery about the good life.
›The argument for the parts of the soulPlato · argumentThe soul has three distinct parts: reason, spirit and appetite; justice is their right order, with reason ruling.
1The same thing cannot do or undergo opposites in the same respect, in relation to the same thing, at the same time.
2A thirsty person can at the same time desire to drink and refuse to drink.
3The refusal comes from reasoning and the desire from appetite.
4Anger can side with reason against appetite (as when Leontius rages at his own desire to look at corpses) yet differs from reason, since children and animals have it without reason.
∴The soul has three distinct parts: reason, spirit and appetite; justice is their right order, with reason ruling.
Aristotle objects. Dividing the soul into reason, spirit and appetite is arbitrary; by the same logic one could posit indefinitely many parts, and desire would be split across them. The soul's capacities should be distinguished by their functions.
David Hume objects. Reason alone cannot oppose a passion; it only informs desire about means and matters of fact. What looks like reason resisting appetite is a calm passion, mistaken for reason because it produces little felt emotion, prevailing over a violent one.
Explain and evaluate Plato's arguments that an ideally just state requires censorship, common property and the noble lie.
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›The state and legitimacyPlatoRule by the wise
Cities will have no rest from evils until philosophers rule or rulers become philosophers, because only those who know the Good can order the city for the good of all. Justice in the city, as in the soul, is each class doing its own work: rulers ruling, auxiliaries guarding, producers producing.
Across the works. The late Laws designs a second-best city ruled by law rather than by philosophers, whose constitution must mix monarchy and democracy (693d–e, 739a–e).
Scholarly consensusRepublic (middle; speaker Socrates); Laws III–V (late; the Athenian Stranger)philosophos basileus, dikaiosyne, kallipolis, ta hautou pratteinDraft — not yet reviewed
›Beauty and artPlatoSuspect imitation · Beauty as ascent
Imitative poetry and painting copy sensible things, which are themselves copies of Forms, so they stand at a third remove from the truth, and poetry feeds the passions it should help to dry up; the ideal city admits only hymns to the gods and praises of good men. Beauty is another matter: love of beautiful bodies, rightly led, rises step by step to the Beautiful itself, the highest object of contemplation.
Scholarly consensusRepublic II–III, X (middle; speaker Socrates); Symposium (middle; Diotima, reported by Socrates); Phaedrus (middle; Socrates)mimesis, mimetes, eidolon, phantasma, mania, to kalonDraft — not yet reviewed
"Art" here is imitative poetry and painting, not the modern fine arts; techne covers any craft. The Phaedrus praises inspired poetic madness (245a) even as the Republic banishes imitative poetry.
›Why the guardians must live under restrictionsPlato · argumentAn ideally just city must censor poetry, deny its rulers property and private families, and found itself on a myth that each citizen's class reflects his nature. The aim is unity and rule by the best, not the happiness of any one class.
1The greatest good for a city is what binds it into one, and the greatest evil what splits it into many; a city is best ordered when its citizens say "mine" and "not mine" of the same things.
2Character is formed in youth by the stories children hear, so the city must supervise the makers of stories and admit only those that show gods and heroes as good.
3Guardians who own land, houses and money become householders, then masters and enemies of the other citizens; so they must hold no private property and live and eat in common.
4Private families divide loyalties, so among the guardians wives and children are to be held in common.
5Citizens will accept their stations more readily if they believe a "noble lie" that all were born from the earth, with gold, silver or bronze and iron mixed into their souls.
∴An ideally just city must censor poetry, deny its rulers property and private families, and found itself on a myth that each citizen's class reflects his nature. The aim is unity and rule by the best, not the happiness of any one class.
Aristotle objects. The city Plato designs aims at too much unity: pushed further it becomes a household and then a single person. What is common to the greatest number receives the least care, so common wives, children and property weaken affection and responsibility; better that property be private and its use made common by friendship and virtue.
Why does Aristotle reject the proposal that a thing's matter has the best claim to being its nature?
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›Nature is an inner principle, more form than matterAristotle · argumentNature is a principle of motion and rest in what has it in itself and not by accident. Both matter and form are called nature, but form has the better claim, which is why the natural philosopher must study form and the end, not only matter.
1Natural things, such as animals, plants and the simple bodies, each have within themselves a principle of change and rest; artefacts such as a bed or a cloak have no innate impulse to change, except so far as they are made of stone or earth.
2Some, like Antiphon, say a thing's nature is its primary matter: if a bed were buried and the rotting wood sent up a shoot, it would come up wood, not bed.
3But a thing is said to be what it is when it is so actually rather than potentially; flesh and bone are not yet natural things until they have the form that their definition states.
4Man is born from man, but bed does not come from bed; what reproduces itself is the form.
5Nature in the sense of growth (phusis) is a path towards nature, and what grows tends towards its form, not back towards its matter.
∴Nature is a principle of motion and rest in what has it in itself and not by accident. Both matter and form are called nature, but form has the better claim, which is why the natural philosopher must study form and the end, not only matter.
Epicurus objects. The atomist reply sides with Antiphon: atoms have only shape, weight and size, and every other quality comes and goes with their arrangement. What persists, and so what a thing really is, is its matter; form is an arrangement, not a principle.
René Descartes objects. There are no substantial forms in bodies: they explain nothing that shape, size and motion of extended matter cannot, and they make natural things seem like souls. Nature is matter moving according to laws.
›The four causes and nature's acting for an endAristotle · argumentFull explanation in natural philosophy names four causes, matter, form, source of change and end, and nature is among the causes that act for the sake of something. Matter is a necessary condition, not the whole explanation.
1We think we know a thing only when we have grasped its why, its primary cause.
2"Why?" is answered in four ways: by the matter out of which a thing comes (the bronze of a statue), the form or account of what it is (the ratio 2:1 of the octave), the primary source of change (the adviser, the father), and the end for the sake of which (health, for which one walks).
3So the student of nature must know all four, and should give the why in all four ways; in natural things form, mover and end often coincide.
4What comes about by chance does not come about always or for the most part, but natural things, such as teeth fitted for biting, come about in this way always or for the most part.
5So natural things do not come about by chance or by necessity of matter alone, but for the sake of something, though nature does not deliberate, as the art of shipbuilding would act for an end if it were in the wood.
∴Full explanation in natural philosophy names four causes, matter, form, source of change and end, and nature is among the causes that act for the sake of something. Matter is a necessary condition, not the whole explanation.
René Descartes objects. Since God's purposes are beyond us, the customary search for final causes is useless in physics; natural philosophy should explain things by efficient causes alone, from the properties of extended matter.
David Hume objects. There is only one kind of cause; the scholastic distinction of efficient, formal, material, exemplary and final causes has no foundation, since causation is constant conjunction together with the mind's habitual inference.
Lucretius objects. On the Nature of Things (book IV) inverts the teleological inference: eyes were not made for seeing; what is born creates its use. Organs arose first, and their functions followed.
How do we become virtuous, according to Aristotle, and what is the point of writing the Nicomachean Ethics?
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›Virtue and knowledgeAristotleKnowledge plus habituation
Character virtue is not knowledge: it comes from habituation, as we become just by doing just acts. Practical wisdom is needed to complete it, but knowing the good does not guarantee acting on it. Against Socrates, weakness of will (akrasia) is real; yet Aristotle's analysis concedes that it is not knowledge in the full sense that passion overcomes.
Stated in the textNicomachean Ethics II.1; VII.1–3ethos, ethike arete, phronesis, akrasia, enkrateiaDraft — not yet reviewed
›Virtue of character comes from habituationAristotle · argumentWe become good by practice under good upbringing and laws, not by nature and not by argument alone. Ethics is therefore practical: we inquire not to know what virtue is but to become good, and those who take refuge in theory are like patients who listen to the doctor and do nothing he says. Since arguments do not move the many, the ethical inquiry leads into legislation.
1Nothing that exists by nature can be trained to behave otherwise, as a stone cannot be habituated to move upward however often it is thrown; so virtues of character do not arise in us by nature.
2Nor do they arise against nature; we are fitted by nature to receive them, and are completed by habit.
3Natural capacities are possessed first and exercised afterwards, as we see before we use our sight; but virtues, like crafts, are acquired by first exercising them, as people become builders by building and just by doing just acts.
4States of character arise from activities like them, which is why lawgivers make citizens good by habituating them, and why it matters greatly how one is brought up from youth.
5A just act done by a just person is done knowingly, chosen for its own sake, and from a firm and unchanging state; the learner does just acts before he does them as the just person does.
∴We become good by practice under good upbringing and laws, not by nature and not by argument alone. Ethics is therefore practical: we inquire not to know what virtue is but to become good, and those who take refuge in theory are like patients who listen to the doctor and do nothing he says. Since arguments do not move the many, the ethical inquiry leads into legislation.
Socrates objects. If virtue is knowledge, as Socrates argues in the Protagoras, then it is acquired by learning what is good, and one who knows the good will do it. Habituation would at most train the non-rational desires that knowledge already masters.
Immanuel Kant objects. In the Doctrine of Virtue (1797) Kant denies that virtue can be defined as a habit, a facility in acting acquired by long practice. A mechanical habit is not a free disposition; virtue is the strength of a will acting from firm and purified principles, and must be renewed in each act.
Explain Aristotle's concept of virtue as a mean between two extremes. Do you agree with him?
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›The basis of moralityAristotleVirtue
Right action is what a person of practical wisdom would determine. Virtue is a settled state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, and there is no rule that fixes the mean in advance. Acting well also requires acting knowingly, by choice, for the sake of the noble, and from a firm character.
Stated in the textNicomachean Ethics II.4–6, VIarete, hexis, mesotes, phronesis, phronimos, prohairesis, to kalonDraft — not yet reviewed
›Virtue as a mean relative to usAristotle · argumentVirtue is a state that decides, lying in a mean relative to us, defined by reason, as the person of practical wisdom would define it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency, as courage lies between rashness and cowardice and temperance between self-indulgence and insensibility; in respect of what is best, it is an extreme.
1Every craft does its work well by looking to the mean and producing it, so that nothing can be added or taken away; virtue, more exact than any craft, also aims at the mean.
2Virtue of character concerns feelings and actions, and in these there is excess, deficiency and the intermediate, as in fear, confidence, appetite, anger and pity.
3The mean that matters is relative to us, not to the object; six pounds of food is the arithmetical mean between ten and two, but too little for Milo the wrestler and too much for a beginner.
4Feeling and acting at the right times, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end and in the right way is the intermediate and best, and is hard; one can miss it in many ways.
5Some feelings and acts, such as spite, shamelessness, envy, adultery, theft and murder, have no mean, since their names already imply that they are bad.
∴Virtue is a state that decides, lying in a mean relative to us, defined by reason, as the person of practical wisdom would define it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency, as courage lies between rashness and cowardice and temperance between self-indulgence and insensibility; in respect of what is best, it is an extreme.
Immanuel Kant objects. In the Doctrine of Virtue (1797) Kant rejects the principle that virtue lies in a mean between two vices: virtue and vice differ not in the degree to which one follows certain maxims but in the quality of the maxims themselves, so avarice and prodigality are not more and less of the same thing.
What is incontinence for Aristotle, and in what sense is intemperance worse than incontinence?
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›Weakness of will and its difference from viceAristotle · argumentWeakness of will is real, but what is overpowered is perceptual knowledge of the particular, not knowledge in the full sense, so in a way the result Socrates sought follows. Intemperance is worse than incontinence: vice is like a chronic disease such as dropsy, incontinence like epilepsy, which comes in fits. In the incontinent the best thing, the first principle, is preserved, so he is curable and easier to persuade, whereas the intemperate person's principle is corrupted.
1It is commonly believed that people sometimes act against what they know to be best, yet Socrates held that it would be strange for knowledge to be dragged about like a slave, so no one acts against what is best except through ignorance.
2One may have knowledge without using it; and having it can itself be like the state of someone asleep, mad or drunk, who can recite proofs and verses without understanding them.
3In action, a universal premise (such sweet things are to be avoided) meets a particular one (this is sweet); appetite can bring in a rival universal (everything sweet is pleasant), and the particular premise is then not grasped in the way that issues in action.
4The incontinent person has the right decision but is carried off by passion, and afterwards repents; the intemperate person acts from decision, thinking he should pursue the pleasure, and does not repent.
∴Weakness of will is real, but what is overpowered is perceptual knowledge of the particular, not knowledge in the full sense, so in a way the result Socrates sought follows. Intemperance is worse than incontinence: vice is like a chronic disease such as dropsy, incontinence like epilepsy, which comes in fits. In the incontinent the best thing, the first principle, is preserved, so he is curable and easier to persuade, whereas the intemperate person's principle is corrupted.
Socrates objects. Knowledge, if it is knowledge, is strong and ruling: whoever learns what is good and bad will not be swayed to act otherwise. Aristotle's solution itself concedes that knowledge in the full sense is never overpowered, so what he calls akrasia is a failure of knowledge, as Socrates said.
Plato objects. The Republic places the conflict between parts of the soul, not between states of knowledge. Reason may know and judge correctly while appetite or spirit fights against it, as when Leontius looks at the corpses while angry with himself, so the akratic need not be in any way ignorant.
David Hume objects. Reason alone can never oppose a passion, so there is no contest between reason and desire to be lost. What is called acting against one's better judgement is a calm passion yielding to a violent one.
›No one does wrong willinglySocrates · argumentWrongdoing comes from ignorance, not from knowing the better and choosing the worse; no one does wrong willingly, and one who knows the good will do it.
1Everyone wants good things, and does whatever they do for the sake of what they take to be good.
2Whoever gets bad things is harmed by them, and those who are harmed are miserable.
3No one wants to be miserable.
4So no one who knows that something is bad for him pursues it; whoever pursues what is bad does so believing it good.
5What the many call being overcome by pleasure is choosing the lesser good over the greater, which is an error of measurement and so a lack of knowledge.
∴Wrongdoing comes from ignorance, not from knowing the better and choosing the worse; no one does wrong willingly, and one who knows the good will do it.
Aristotle objects. The thesis plainly conflicts with what we observe: people act against what they believe best. Aristotle allows that the akratic's knowledge is in a sense not active at the moment of acting, but holds that weakness of will is real and not mere ignorance.
Plato objects. The Republic's Socrates argues that the same person can at once desire to drink and refuse to, and that anger can fight against appetite, as when Leontius looks at the corpses against his own judgment; the soul has parts that can oppose reason, so knowing the best is not enough.
Compare and contrast the accounts given by Plato and Aristotle of how change comes about.
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›Being and realityPlatoSeparate Forms
What truly is are the Forms: eternal, unchanging, intelligible natures such as the Just itself or the Equal itself, which sensible things participate in and are named after. Sensibles come to be and pass away and are never fully what they are called. Above the Forms stands the Good, the source of their being and intelligibility, which surpasses being in dignity and power.
Another reading. Aristotle reports that Plato made the One and the Great-and-Small (the Indefinite Dyad) the principles of the Forms themselves (Metaphysics A.6, 987b18–988a17). The Tübingen school (Krämer, Gaiser) reconstructs from such reports an unwritten doctrine in which the Good of the Republic is the One, the first principle from which the Forms derive.
Scholarly consensusmiddle dialogues (Phaedo, Republic; speaker Socrates); criticised in the late-middle Parmenides 130a–135c; retained in the late Timaeus (speaker Timaeus)eidos, idea, ousia, methexis, to agathon, epekeina tes ousiasDraft — not yet reviewed
Calling this "idealism" is a modern misnomer: the Forms are mind-independent realities, not ideas in a mind. How far the late dialogues revise the theory after the Parmenides is debated. The option `the-one` is defined in Plotinian terms; the alternative uses it only for a derivation of the Forms from a first principle.
›Change requires a subject, a form and a privationAristotle · argumentChange is real and intelligible: it is the acquisition of form by a persisting subject that previously lacked it. This answers Parmenides without denying change and grounds the analysis of substances into matter and form, and potentiality and actuality.
1In every change something comes to be from something; when an unmusical man becomes musical, the man persists while the unmusical gives way to the musical.
2So every change involves a subject (substrate) that persists, a form that is acquired, and a privation, the absence of that form, from which it comes.
3The Eleatics argued that nothing comes to be: what comes to be must come either from what is, which already is, or from what is not, from which nothing can come.
4But a thing comes to be from what is not only accidentally, in that it comes from a subject that has the privation; in itself it comes from the subject.
5The same puzzle is also solved by distinguishing what a thing is potentially from what it is actually.
∴Change is real and intelligible: it is the acquisition of form by a persisting subject that previously lacked it. This answers Parmenides without denying change and grounds the analysis of substances into matter and form, and potentiality and actuality.
Epicurus objects. The atomist answer to the Eleatics needs no forms or privations: nothing comes from or passes into what is not, because atoms are unchangeable, and what we call change is the rearrangement, addition and subtraction of atoms in a void.
›Forms explain nothingAristotle · argumentSeparate Forms are causally idle: they explain neither the being nor the becoming of sensible things, and an adequate explanation needs moving causes and forms within things.
1Forms are posited as causes of sensible things, of their being, their coming to be and our knowledge of them.
2But Forms contribute nothing to the motion or change of sensibles, and, not being in them, they contribute nothing to their being or to our knowledge of them.
3To call Forms patterns in which other things participate is to use empty words and poetic metaphors.
4A substance cannot exist apart from that of which it is the substance, yet Forms are said to be the substances of things and separate from them.
5Even granting Forms, things do not come to be unless something moves them, and many things, such as houses and rings, come to be though Platonists posit no Forms of them.
∴Separate Forms are causally idle: they explain neither the being nor the becoming of sensible things, and an adequate explanation needs moving causes and forms within things.
Plato objects. The Phaedo already separates two kinds of explanation: the "safe" answer that beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful, and the material conditions without which a cause could not be a cause. Forms are offered as the first kind, not as moving causes, so it is no objection that they move nothing.
›The cyclical argument (Phaedo)Plato · argumentThe living come from the dead as the dead from the living, so the souls of the dead exist somewhere, from which they return to life. Cebes at once asks for more, that the soul keeps its intelligence, which the recollection argument is brought in to supply.
1Whatever has an opposite comes to be from its opposite and only from it, as the larger from the smaller and the waking from the sleeping.
2Between each pair of opposites there are two processes, one in each direction, such as falling asleep and waking up.
3Living and being dead are opposites, and dying, the process from living to dead, is plain to see.
4Nature is not lame on one side, so there must also be the reverse process, coming back to life from the dead.
5If generation went in a straight line and never came round again, everything would end up dead and nothing would be alive.
∴The living come from the dead as the dead from the living, so the souls of the dead exist somewhere, from which they return to life. Cebes at once asks for more, that the soul keeps its intelligence, which the recollection argument is brought in to supply.
Epicurus objects. Grant that matter is never lost and is endlessly recombined: what returns is atoms, not souls. The soul is a body of fine atoms that disperses when its containing body is destroyed, so it no longer has its powers or its sensation, and nothing personal comes back.
David Hume objects. Arguments of this metaphysical kind prove too much: what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable, so an immortal soul existed before birth, and if that earlier existence did not concern us, neither will a later one. Analogy from nature points the other way, since whatever we observe comes to be and passes away.
Examine and assess the Epicurean arguments for why death should be nothing to us.
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›Death and immortalityEpicurusMortal
Good and evil require sensation, and death is the end of sensation, so death is nothing to us. When the body is resolved into its elements the soul is scattered and nothing remains that could feel. Understanding this removes the longing for immortality and makes mortal life enjoyable.
Stated in the textLetter to Menoeceus 124–125; Principal Doctrines 2; Letter to Herodotus 65thanatos, anaisthesia, steresis aistheseosDraft — not yet reviewed
›Death is nothing to usEpicurus · argumentDeath is nothing to us, and fearing it is groundless. Seeing this removes the longing for immortality and makes a mortal life enjoyable. The argument targets the fear of being dead, not of dying, and is extended by the symmetry argument (epicurus-symmetry-argument). The standard modern reply is the deprivation account (Nagel 1970, "Death"): death can be bad for someone without being experienced, by depriving them of goods they would otherwise have had.
1Good and evil require sensation.
2Death is the privation of all sensation, since when the body is dissolved into its elements nothing remains that can feel.
3So death is neither good nor evil for the one who dies; when we are, death is not present, and when death is present, we are not.
4What causes no distress when it is present causes only groundless pain when it is anticipated.
∴Death is nothing to us, and fearing it is groundless. Seeing this removes the longing for immortality and makes a mortal life enjoyable. The argument targets the fear of being dead, not of dying, and is extended by the symmetry argument (epicurus-symmetry-argument). The standard modern reply is the deprivation account (Nagel 1970, "Death"): death can be bad for someone without being experienced, by depriving them of goods they would otherwise have had.
Plato objects. The second premise is false: the soul is by nature alive and cannot admit death, so at death it departs from the body and continues to exist and perceive.
Aristotle objects. The dead are commonly thought to be affected by goods and evils they do not perceive, such as honours and dishonours and the fortunes of their descendants; Aristotle allows that such things touch them, though only slightly.
›The symmetry argumentEpicurus · argumentNon-existence after death is no more to be feared than non-existence before birth; it is a mirror nature holds up of the time after we die. The premises are Epicurus' own, but the explicit comparison with the time before birth is stated in later Epicurean sources, chiefly Lucretius. The modern reply (Nagel 1970) is that the two times are not symmetrical: death deprives us of future life we would otherwise have had, whereas we could not have been born much earlier and still be who we are.
1What we never experience can be neither good nor bad for us; death is nothing either to the living, for whom it is not present, or to the dead, who no longer exist.
2The endless time before we were born was nothing to us; no one is distressed that they did not exist then.
3The time after our death is like the time before our birth in every respect that matters, since in both we do not exist and feel nothing.
∴Non-existence after death is no more to be feared than non-existence before birth; it is a mirror nature holds up of the time after we die. The premises are Epicurus' own, but the explicit comparison with the time before birth is stated in later Epicurean sources, chiefly Lucretius. The modern reply (Nagel 1970) is that the two times are not symmetrical: death deprives us of future life we would otherwise have had, whereas we could not have been born much earlier and still be who we are.
Plato objects. The second premise is false if the soul existed before birth: the recollection argument concludes that our souls existed apart from bodies, with intelligence, before they took human form, so neither time is simply nothing to us.
Aristotle objects. Good and bad can touch someone who does not perceive them: the dead are thought to be affected, if only slightly, by honours and dishonours and by the fortunes of their descendants, so what is not experienced is not thereby nothing to us.
How is our assessment of the Epicurean claims about pleasure and justice affected by the distinction between kinetic and katastematic pleasures?
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›The highest goodEpicurusTranquillity and freedom from pain
The goal of every action is to be free from pain in the body and disturbance in the soul; once that is reached, nothing further is lacking. Pleasure in this sense is the beginning and end of the blessed life, and its limit is the removal of all pain. It is not the pleasure of the profligate but a calm state reached by sober reasoning and simple living.
Stated in the textLetter to Menoeceus 128–132; Principal Doctrines 3ataraxia, aponia, hedone, katastematike hedone, telosDraft — not yet reviewed
›The kinds of desire and the measure of pleasureEpicurus · argumentThe pleasant life is a simple and prudent one that satisfies natural and necessary desires and removes bodily pain and mental disturbance; the virtues are inseparable from it.
1Pleasure is the first good and the starting point of every choice and avoidance.
2Some desires are natural and necessary, some natural but not necessary, and some neither natural nor necessary but due to empty opinion.
3The necessary desires are necessary either for happiness, for the body's freedom from discomfort, or for life itself; desires whose frustration brings no pain are unnecessary.
4The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit with the removal of all pain; beyond that pleasure only varies.
5Freedom from bodily pain (aponia) and from mental disturbance (ataraxia) are static (katastematic) pleasures, while joy and delight are pleasures in motion (kinetic) (Diogenes Laertius X.136, reporting Epicurus' On Choices); on the standard interpretation, the static pleasures are the goal and kinetic pleasures only vary them.
6Natural and necessary desires are easily satisfied, while empty desires are unlimited and bring more pain than pleasure.
7So pleasures and pains must be measured against one another, and some pleasures passed over and some pains accepted for the sake of the whole of life.
∴The pleasant life is a simple and prudent one that satisfies natural and necessary desires and removes bodily pain and mental disturbance; the virtues are inseparable from it.
Plato objects. The calm between pleasure and pain is neither; it seems pleasant only by contrast with the pain that preceded it. To call the absence of pain pleasure is an illusion about the nature of pleasure.
Cicero objects. In On Ends (book II) Cicero argues that Epicurus equivocates on "pleasure", using it both for enjoyable motion and for the mere absence of pain, which no one else calls pleasure.
›Justice is a compact for mutual advantageEpicurus · argumentJustice is conventional but not arbitrary: it is whatever compacts in fact serve mutual security, the same everywhere in general and different in particulars. The wise person keeps it because injustice brings fear and so destroys the tranquillity that is the end of life.
1Natural justice is a pledge of mutual advantage, that people should neither harm nor be harmed by one another.
2Animals and peoples that cannot or will not make such compacts have neither justice nor injustice; there is no justice in itself, only agreements made in particular places and times.
3Injustice is not bad in itself but only for its consequence, the fear of being found out by those appointed to punish it.
4No one who secretly breaks the compact can be sure he will remain undiscovered, even if he has escaped many times.
5A law is just while it serves mutual advantage, and ceases to be just when, circumstances having changed, it no longer does.
∴Justice is conventional but not arbitrary: it is whatever compacts in fact serve mutual security, the same everywhere in general and different in particulars. The wise person keeps it because injustice brings fear and so destroys the tranquillity that is the end of life.
Plato objects. The Republic states the compact theory through Glaucon in order to refute it: justice is not a compromise accepted by the weak but the health of the soul, good in itself whether or not anyone is found out (plato-glaucon-challenge, plato-justice-happiest).
David Hume objects. Hume agrees that justice is artificial and grounded in its usefulness, but denies that it rests on a contract: it arises from a convention, a general sense of common interest like that of two men rowing a boat, which is not of the nature of a promise, since promises themselves depend on such conventions.
Cicero objects. In On Laws (book I) Cicero argues that justice measured by advantage is no justice at all: one who thinks breaking a law profitable will break it whenever he can avoid detection, so justice must exist by nature.
